SMS: Software_Inventory Table Grows Because Creation Date Causes Unique Entry for Each Inventoried File (303417)

SYMPTOMS

If multiple files with the same file name are found during a software inventory scan, these files are not necessarily treated as unique. Because of this, only a single instance of the file is reported with a creation date that corresponds to the last file found during the scan. This problem was initially reported and resolved prior to Systems Management Server (SMS) 2.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2). The fix was included with the client hotfix bundle for SMS 2.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) as described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

238762 SMS: Software Inventory Creation Date Is Incorrect in SMS Database

MORE INFORMATION

After the fix for this issue was deployed, reports of using this fix in production indicated scalability concerns because of the software inventory database table growing excessively large. The problems that were created by the software inventory table growing to excessive size included delays in loading software inventory, delays processing software inventory queries, and so on.

Because of scalability concerns, this fix was removed prior to the release of SMS 2.0 SP2. Because of this, for installations of SMS 2.0 SP2 or later (of those installations that are still running SMS 2.0 SP1 but without the client hotfix bundle installed), the misreporting of the file creation date for those files with the same name is to be expected.