Knowledge base

The knowledge base is a collection of information about software products, their components, the dependencies between them, and the means to discover them.

The knowledge base is an up-to-date, accurate repository of knowledge that can support the automated discovery of both installed and running software products. The information in the knowledge base can be obtained through software scans and human research. It can also be based on the documents and data published by software manufacturers. The content of the knowledge base is exported to software catalogs that can then be used by Control Desk applications.

Currently, the software knowledge base data that is central to the functioning of Control Desk applications is issued monthly for distributed platforms and quarterly for the System z® platform. The data is kept up to date with respect to new IBM® products by the ITLM readiness process, which is part of the release process for new product versions and releases. Data about non-IBM products can also be maintained in the knowledge base.

While data about non-IBM products can be imported directly into the Maximo® database database using discovery tools, Integration Composer, and one of the integration adapters provided with this product, such discovery tools often have no strictly defined knowledge base. They typically rely on alternative ways to discover and report software inventory. As a result, they do not provide the additional details about the software titles that are available with the knowledge base data imported from the optional Tivoli® Asset Discovery for Distributed and Tivoli Asset Discovery for z/OS®. These additional details might include information about, for example, licensing or version dependency-information that can be helpful to the users of Control Desk.