This chapter explored the key design principles that ServiceNow is built on, ensuring the foundations of the platform are well understood. A ServiceNow instance is a single-tenancy design, giving you a great deal of control and independence over how the platform works for you. The architecture of the system relies upon its database to store all configuration and data, so the hosting of ServiceNow gives a redundant pair for maintenance, disaster recovery, and performance reasons.

Creating tables and fields is a fundamental part of administrating ServiceNow. There are many field types available, from strings to URLs and choice fields. The dictionary stores information about each field and can make the values of the field either unique or act as the record's display value.

In a relational system, linking records together is a key part of data design. Reference fields provide links between two records and provide a great deal of capability and configuration choice, such as the ever-useful dot-walking.

The ServiceNow interface is built on lists and forms. These relate to the database tables they display and provide a great deal of functionality, from hierarchical lists to tags and views to filtered modules. UI16 contains some great features to make it really easy to work in, such as favorites, history, Connect, and live form updates

The next chapter will build on the data structure we've started here. We will progress into some of the advanced features of ServiceNow and begin by exploring the developer studio, the one-stop shop for your application. Application scope will start coming into its own, and we will dive into some complex relationships, such as many-to-many.