Building hierarchical tables
Chapter 1, ServiceNow Foundations, introduced the foundations of ServiceNow. One of the most fundamental parts of an application is how it stores its data, and we saw how virtually everything you see and do in the platform is stored in the database.
Specifically, ServiceNow is built on a relational database. Instances hosted by ServiceNow use MySQL, a popular open source database that is robust, well featured, and scalable. These kinds of relational databases are relatively simple to understand, which is one of the reasons they are most commonly used: data is held in tables and columns, and relationships may exist between rows.
Tip
The ServiceNow platform can run on almost any relational database, such as Oracle or SQL Server. But supporting different architectures is difficult, so it is not a standard offering.
Benefiting from an object-oriented design
The simplicity of a relational database means that, on its own, it does not easily represent the data...
