hi all and in today's session we'll be looking on a topic called remote tables so let's start with my introduction i'm amik sarathi i work as a senior servicenow developer at cognizant i have experience of seven plus years in servicenow development and i have a service now mvp for 2022. so the agenda of today's session so the agenda of this session is to understand what is the word different components of framework table how remote table works external data life cycle for the remote table a use case for remote tables and then we will look into the demo for the same so let's try to understand first what is remote remote table so remote table connects the now platform to third-party sources or to another instance so that you can retrieve external data and optionally cache it into memory without storing it into an instance so you can view external data in the list of form and procedures process that particular data like you did for using glide scripts and all but that particular data will not be present on your system that particular data will be you can say virtually map to your system so you can see it on the forms and list view you can also group sort aggregate and filter that data just like you did for the standard internet tables okay now let's look into the different components for remote tables so remote papers has two main components using which we can build an external data framework so the first entity is remote tables so what are remote tables so remote tables are used to describe the schema for the data that you have retrieved from an external source the data definition in service is in the service now instance but its rows or we can call it as our external records lives in the memory so just like we create standard table you can create remote tables you define columns and control the designated application axis for it just like you did for no any other internet table but unlike internet table a remote table does not get its record from the now platform database so it went to say the data is not residing on the now platform it gets its record from running an associated script okay against an external data source so what it will do it will run a script using that script uh it will pull the data from an external source maybe it's another instance or maybe any other external source and it will showcase that data in that particular table now how exactly this script gets executed and how exactly we can define the script so this is the second component in our list which is script definition so you what is script definition so you can create an associated script definition with a remote table okay the external data that you have retrieved using the script can be cached into a memory you can also designate how this data is cached and how for how long you want to cache this data into a memory okay every time you refresh a list that contains this extent data from a table table the associate script definition what you have defined will run for the table will run again and you will get the reference set of data so you can call it a session but till the time you are there on the form what is the time you are there on the list view you will get the data once you refresh the list you will you will get the refresh data on the system so let's understand how this remote table works so that remote of remote table is pretty simple so by using a remote table you can retrieve the the data from external sources or from any other instances with rest or sopranos services so you can have the integration between service now instance and any external resources using either rest services or soap services it doesn't matter which one you use okay the external data lives in the memory in the read-only mode because as i stated before this data is not stored on servicenow instance right so it will be in a read-only mode okay which makes the temp that temporary or transient with the narrow platform platform you can then view and manipulate the external data without importing or sorting it okay you can view the external data in the list or form in the same way you you can view the internet sorted data also you can manipulate this data using standard light record queries business rules remote apis scripting paper reference fields services and development tools in the now platform so you can consider the data uh do all kind of operations on that just the matter of fact is like this particular data is not stored on the servicenow instance now let's first understand how the external now as we mentioned that this data is not residing on the now platform then there should be some external live data lifecycle right around this data so in this particular slide we will understand how this external data lifecycle works okay in the now platform so the data you retrieve from an extent source has a finite duration or we can call it a or finite life cycle within the nav platform when you run script that is associated with that remote table the retrieved data lives in the memory as long as you as long as the list of form appears after you close the list of form that external data is pulled out of memory okay the next time that you use the view or views the external data in the remote table gets repopulated from the external source so whenever you refresh the data you close the open it will always trigger the script again and it will give you the refresh data however if you have defined caching parameter for the script right there is the attribute called caching parameter for the script then the external data demands in cache memory for the specified caching duration so for example if you have designated that the external data should be cached for 300 seconds so it will remain in the cache cache memory in for five minutes so if you refresh your form as many times as you want in that five minutes that you will see the same data simple data after that time expire the cache data will is purged out of your memory again the next time that you use the view or view the external data in the remote table the cache is refreshed from the external system i think it's pretty simple to understand how exactly the reward table works now let's understand what now we understood okay what is remote table how exactly it works and everything but now most of the people will be having a question what is the practical application of this remote table right where exactly we can use this remote table so the answer for this is like you can set up and use demo table in your enterprise when you want to fetch an extern data for temporary use without storing it on the now platform okay so when you don't want to store the data on the nav platform you can use this uh extra remote table scenario so for example if you want to ask you can create a remote table that fetches weather related information okay just giving up just giving one example so we can fetch this a weather related information that appears on your home page whenever the user logs so you would then create the theory script definition that requires this data from the third party weather source okay that is based on the user location now you you want to retrieve this gps customer details that are sorted in the external customer relationship table that is also one thing if you consider first example right with the weather now you want to show the weather forecast for that particular location but you don't want to store it on the service donation because it doesn't add any value to your system right or to your application so in this kind of scenarios you can use the remote table i hope it's pretty clear so there may be n number of scenarios i've encountered where when i where i need some data but i don't want to store it on the servicenow instead in all those cases you can use the remote tables now let's jump into the demo to understand more in detail about the implementation of the same