SNOW-CAD Integrating and managing application data Practice Question
A company has a ServiceNow instance integrated with a third-party ticket management system. The integration runs every hour via a scheduled job that calls a REST API to fetch new tickets and create incidents in ServiceNow. The administrator notices that some incidents are being created as duplicates. Investigation reveals that the third-party system sometimes returns the same ticket in multiple API calls due to caching. The scheduled job does not check for existing incidents before creating new ones. The administrator needs to modify the integration to prevent duplicate incidents without relying on the third-party system to change its behavior. Which action should the administrator take?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates might choose Option D (delete duplicates after creation) because it seems like a quick fix, but the SNOW-CAD exam emphasizes preventing errors at the point of data entry rather than relying on post-processing cleanup, which can lead to data inconsistency and performance issues.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Add a check in the integration script to query the incident table for an existing incident with the same external ticket ID before creating a new one.
The most reliable way to prevent duplicates is to check the incident table for an existing record with the same external ticket ID before creating a new incident. This leverages the unique identifier from the third-party system and avoids relying on the third-party's caching behavior. By querying the incident table using a GlideRecord lookup on a field that stores the external ID, the script can conditionally skip creation if a match is found.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Add a check in the integration script to query the incident table for an existing incident with the same external ticket ID before creating a new one.
Why this is correct
This ensures that duplicates are prevented at creation time by checking a unique external ID field.
- ✗
Modify the integration to only create incidents if the ticket status is 'New'.
Why it's wrong here
The status may not indicate uniqueness; the same ticket could still be returned with status 'New' multiple times.
- ✗
Increase the scheduled job interval to run every 2 hours.
Why it's wrong here
This reduces frequency but does not prevent duplicates when the same ticket is returned in separate runs.
- ✗
Add a post-processing script that deletes duplicate incidents after each run.
Why it's wrong here
This is inefficient and could cause data loss if legitimate duplicates are deleted.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SNOW-CAD practice question is part of Courseiva's free ServiceNow certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SNOW-CAD exam.