This Node Lifecycle Document is intended for the following audience:

• The Customers and Partners of BMC Software.
• If you need to understand the BMC Atrium Discovery node lifecycle.
• Users who need to understand some of the internal components of BMC Atrium Discovery.
• Integrations Developers.
• If you need to extend the BMC Atrium Discovery data model.
• If you need to know how a specific entity is modeled. For example, If you are interested in virtualization hosts and how they are modeled.

This Node Lifecycle Document describes the BMC Atrium Discovery object model. The following sections provide an introduction to the BMC Atrium Discovery data model and the way it works:

• For a summary description of the BMC Atrium Discovery data model, see Model Summary.
• For a diagram of the BMC Atrium Discovery data model and an overview of the node kinds, see The Default Data Model.
• The Key and Name attributes are described in How Nodes are Identified.
• A summary of the attributes which BMC Atrium Discovery can collect per operating system platform is detailed in Discovered Attributes by Platform.
• Information about the different methods which can be used to remove inferred nodes is described in How Nodes Get Removed.
• An overview of Relationships and how they work is detailed in Relationships.
• For information about attachments, see Attachments.
• For information about partitions and history, see Partitions and History.

The later section focus on the four different types of nodes available:

• Inferred Nodes – see Inferred Nodes.
• Directly Discovered Nodes – see Directly Discovered Data Nodes.
• Pattern Management Nodes – see Pattern Management Nodes.

The nodes are described in terms of their attributes, relationships and lifecycle.
Nodes can also be created by a user; some of their attributes and relationships are only populated by the user through the User Interface. Where attributes and relationships are only populated in this way, it is noted.

This document assumes familiarity with BMC Atrium Discovery and should be used in conjunction with the BMC Atrium Discovery User Guide, Configuration Guide, and the Search and Reporting Service.

You will find this document useful if you need to understand the node lifecycle and some of the internal mechanics of BMC Atrium Discovery.

You will also find it useful if you need to integrate BMC Atrium Discovery with another system and you need to understand how the data is managed across its lifecycle in BMC Atrium Discovery, what it means, when it gets created and so forth.