Direct Database Access

[Kelvin]

I am currently working closely with our development team and they have been successfully working with the APIs, One question they had was what some of the values were for the payload. I am able to find these easily by looking at the tables.

How easy is it to set them up with read only access to the DB.

I did try to create a new role and give them Get Schema and Get records but the Direct DB access does not appear in the advanced tools and settings menu

[Steve Giller]

Even read-only access to the database can cause issues, and we would not recommend sharing this to any more Users than is absolutely necessary - preferably none at all.

Granting access to the Entity Explorer view should give them all the information they require, e.g:

[Kelvin]

@Steve Giller Thanks Steve. The issue we have is for the API the developer wants to know things like the Value of a given priority. The Documentation shows you need to get this from the h_pk_priorityid of h_itsm_priorty. Is this available outside of the direct database view.

[Gerry]

@Kelvin

Just echoing @Steve Giller point, the list in question is a dynamic list, that is to say, as a customer you can change/add/remove items from that list, and so the ID's (in this case the primary key values) may change accordingly.  I would not be encouraging your developer to "look in the database" because, although there is very often a 1-2-1 correlation, sometimes there is not, and sometimes we might change things around under the hood. 

Technically speaking, the database schema is not considered customer-facing, which means we are likely to change that schema over time.   So there are three things to consider here...

* We can/should modify the priorities list in the UI to give you a way of seeing the current ID's, possibly an addtional column or a tooltip
* As this relates to API usage, perhaps we need to provide your developer with an API like getPriorityList which would give you a list of priorities and their ID's
* Fro customers that want Direct Database access, we do have a "customer facing" database schema that is optimised for reporting. That may or may not include specifics that you might need, but there is at least a mechanism for customers to have access to this.  Whats important about this is, its designated customer-facing, which means you can safely report against that data, use it, become familiar with it, its not the same as the main system database, its a subset of the useful stuff for reporting, but because its published its not subject to ad-hoc changes like the system database.  You can read more about this here:   https://docs.hornbill.com/esp-fundamentals/core-capabilities/direct-database-access

In the mean time, if you can continue to identify the specifics that your developer does need, we may be able to facilitate either by prioritising updating the product as described above) or update the API documentation accordingly. In advance of that, we can provide the details on these forums... perhahps you could suggest your developer creates an account on here also. 

Gerry

[Kelvin]

Thanks @Gerry I think the main one for us at the moment is the Priority IDs, so your 1st consideration would be great. I will post further as the developer works through the API payload.