Are there formal linkages between base Orion functionality and IPAM

Question

I'm attempting to understand how SolarWinds Orion IPAM tables relate to the Orion ones. I know there are entries on the IPAM side that need some attention and/or cleanup. So I've written various queries like the following where the IP Address was the key:

SELECT DISTINCT
       I.IPAddress
     , I.DnsBackward
     , O.Caption
     , O.IP_Address
FROM IPAM.IPNode AS I
LEFT OUTER JOIN Orion.Nodes AS O ON I.IPAddress = O.IP_Address
WHERE I.Status = 1
AND ( I.DnsBackward LIKE '' OR I.DnsBackward IS NULL)

I get lots of mismatches when I attempt to link using IP Address. So several questions:

1. Is there any formal linkage (key) between these two tables?
2. If there is no formal linkage, is there a better join key to use?
3. Is there some place I can see linkages (keys) between Orion and IPAM tables?

The query above is directed at finding entries that are missing DNS A record and PTR entries. So I can add them using the SDK powershell interface:

Invoke-SwisVerb $swis IPAM.IPAddressManagement AddDnsARecordWithPtr @("QQQ.TestZone.", "10.11.78.25", "10.199.7.82", "TestZone")

Answer 1

The reason you are struggling is that the tables are unrelated.

The Orion.Nodes table will only contain managed devices in IPAM, this is typically the DHCP and DNS servers that are configured (with suitable credentials) to be polled by IPAM. This table uses the NodeID as its unique reference. If you can see the device from http://--IPAM-Server--/ui/manage/nodes then it will be in the Nodes table.

IPAM.IPNode table is for the devices found from the IPAM scans, this is a non-related table and you will find matching node names and IP addresses, but not a matching NodeID.

This table uses IpNodeId as its unique reference.

SELECT IpNodeId,IPAddress, 
       CASE
           WHEN ISNULL(sysname, '') <> '' THEN sysname
           WHEN ISNULL(DnsBackward, '') <> '' THEN DnsBackward
           WHEN ISNULL(Alias, '') <> '' THEN Alias
           ELSE ''
       END AS Hostname
FROM  IPAM.IPNode
WHERE Status = 1 --IP Address Used