More about generic assets and CIs

Generic assets and CIs are created with the minimal amount of data necessary to manage them. They are created in several circumstances.

Generic assets and CIs are permanent, authorized resources that remain in the database until they are reclassified (during promotion) or removed by a user. They can be linked to their deployed asset or actual CI counterpart having the same identifier, and linked to their corresponding CIs and assets, so that the two can be managed together.

Generic assets and CIs are editable when linked to their deployed asset or actual CI counterparts. A linked generic asset, for example, is read-write so it can be reclassified during the promotion process.

Generics are like any other authorized assets or CIs, but contain a minimum amount of data. As more data becomes available (as their associated deployed assets or actual CIs are imported, for example), the new data can be added during the promotion process. When promotion finds that a generic asset or CI already exists, it copies all the new data from the deployed asset or the actual CI into the generic and changes its classification from generic to one specified by the user. At this point they no longer retain the GENERIC classification, though they are still authorized assets and CIs.

When the default asset-CI reconciliation task (for automated linking) is active and running, and the autocreate option is on, a generic asset or CI is created automatically under the following circumstances:

When the asset-CI reconciliation task finds an authorized asset that is not linked to any authorized CI (a generic CI is created and linked to the asset)
When the asset-CI reconciliation task finds an authorized CI that is not linked to any authorized asset (a generic asset is created and linked to the CI)

In the cases noted above, a generic asset or CI is not created if a corresponding authorized asset or CI is available. That is because the generic asset or CI would be a “duplicate” of the authorized one, in the sense that it would have the same identifier (though probably different content). To minimize the inadvertent creation of such duplicates, the promotion process first looks for an existing authorized asset or CI. Only when no existing one can be found is a generic asset or CI created.

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