Standard has Config Item Relationship works the other way around

Dennis_de_Jager

I'm making some request offering around Standards and I run into the Standard has Config Item Relationship which is made when you add Configuration Items to the Standard on the main tab of the Standard form.

How you would think it should work (at least I did):
Make a Standard that is a bundle of other Standards, add those "Sub-Standards" to the "Main-Standard" and off we go.
We make an Request Offering and make 2 Query Results, the first on for the "Main Standard" and the Second for the related "Sub-Standards".
We relate the second Query Result to the first Query Result with a token from the first in the relationship type Standard has Config item.

And that doesn't work.

What does work is adding the "Main-Standard" to all the separate Sub-Standards. 
This has something to do with the direction of the relationship, which object is Target and which is Source.
Which I think in this case is just the wrong way. 

I'm going to automate this, since the relation in the Main-Standard is the primary way of doing One to Many.
But I'm really against making Many to One relationships to make this work.

Can anybody explain me why this relationship type is made the way it is and in which scenarios I could benefit from it?

Geoff_Ross

Dennis, as we discussed yesterday in London, I think a custom Type Projection should help you out. Its not the relationship that is the wrong way round, its just the TP. I'll see if I can find time to knock something up for you.

Brett_Moffett

I'm not sure that this is how the Standards CI was originally envisioned. But I totally understand what you are trying to achieve here.
Can you give me an example of how these standards would work in your scenario?

I think what you are saying is something like:
HR Manager

• Desktop User (Contains MS Office, Adobe Reader, Chrome)
• Remote Access (Cisco VPN software, AD Group for VPN Access)
• Mobile User (AD Group for Outlook web access)

This way the Desktop User, Remote User and Mobile User can be re-used across multiple roles as it were.
Is this how you want it to work?

Dennis_de_Jager

That is exactly what I mean.
Example for Server Roles:

Web Server

• IIS
• Apache
• .NET 3.5
• .NET 4.5
• PHP

The Main Role Web server is used for naming, hardening and placing it in the correct network.
The Subroles are features and extra software that we want to automate installation of, plus make reporting easier.

This is all done to make automation possible and more flexible. 
There are other ways to do this, but this seems like a logical one.

Geoff_Ross

Dennis, as we discussed yesterday in London, I think a custom Type Projection should help you out. Its not the relationship that is the wrong way round, its just the TP. I'll see if I can find time to knock something up for you.