PowerShell Scripting to Replicate ServiceNow Data to MySQL

The CData Cmdlets for ServiceNow offer live access to ServiceNow data from within PowerShell. Using PowerShell scripts, you can easily automate regular tasks like data replication. This article will walk through using the CData Cmdlets for ServiceNow and the CData Cmdlets for MySQL in PowerShell to replicate ServiceNow data to a MySQL database.

After obtaining the needed connection properties, accessing ServiceNow data in PowerShell and preparing for replication consists of four basic steps.

ServiceNow uses the OAuth 2.0 authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to register an OAuth app with ServiceNow to obtain the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret connection properties. In addition to the OAuth values, you will need to specify the Instance, Username, and Password connection properties.

See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide on connecting to ServiceNow.

Collecting ServiceNow Data

1. Install the module:

   Install-Module ServiceNowCmdlets

2. Connect to ServiceNow:

   $servicenow = Connect-ServiceNow -OAuthClientId $OAuthClientId -OAuthClientSecret $OAuthClientSecret -Username $Username -Password $Password -Instance $Instance

3. Retrieve the data from a specific resource:

   $data = Select-ServiceNow -Connection $servicenow -Table "incident"

   You can also use the Invoke-ServiceNow cmdlet to execute pure SQL-92 statements:

   $data = Invoke-ServiceNow -Connection $servicenow -Query 'SELECT * FROM incident WHERE category = @category' -Params @{'@category'='request'}

4. Save a list of the column names from the returned data.

   $columns = ($data | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty | Select-Object -Property Name).Name

Inserting ServiceNow Data into the MySQL Database

With the data and column names collected, you are ready to replicate the data into a MySQL database.

1. Install the module:

   Install-Module MySQLCmdlets

2. Connect to MySQL, using the server address and port of the MySQL server, valid user credentials, and a specific database with the table in which the data will be replicated:

   $mysql = Connect-MySQL -User $User -Password $Password -Database $Database -Server $Server -Port $Port

3. Loop through the ServiceNow data, store the values, and use the Add-MySQL cmdlet to insert the data into the MySQL database, one row at a time. In this example, the table will need to have the same name as the ServiceNow resource (incident) and to exist in the database.

   $data | % { $row = $_ $values = @() $columns | % { $col = $_ $values += $row.$($col) } Add-MySQL -Connection $mysql -Table "incident" -Columns $columns -Values $values }

You have now replicated your ServiceNow data to a MySQL database. This gives you freedom to work with ServiceNow data in the same way that you work with other MySQL tables, whether that is performing analytics, building reports, or other business functions.

Notes

• Once you have connected to ServiceNow and MySQL in PowerShell, you can pipe command results to perform the replication in a single line:

  Select-ServiceNow -Connection $servicenow -Table "incident" | % { $row = $_ $values = @() $columns | % { $col = $_ $values += $row.$($col) } Add-MySQL -Connection $mysql -Table "incident" -Columns $columns -Values $values }

• If you wish to replicate the ServiceNow data to another database using another PowerShell module, you will want to exclude the Columns, Connection, and Table columns from the data returned by the Select-ServiceNow cmdlet since those columns are used to help pipe data from one CData cmdlet to another:

  $columns = ($data | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty | Select-Object -Property Name).Name | ? {$_ -NotIn @('Columns','Connection','Table')}