The definition of a CMDB in the context of this specification is based on the definition described in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL): a database that tracks and records configuration items associated with the IT infrastructure and the relationships between them. Strictly speaking, the ITIL CMDB contains a record of the expected configuration of the IT environment, as authorized and controlled through the change management and configuration management processes. The federated CMDB in this specification extends this base definition to federate any management information that complies with the specification’s patterns, schema, and interfaces, such as the discovered actual state in addition to the expected state. Typically, an administrator selects the data to be included in a CMDB by configuring the tool that implements the CMDB.