KEDB stands for Knowledge Error Data Base. It is the repository that holds information about problems/issues affecting customers and IT teams within an organization, for which the root cause is known, however, a permanent solution is not yet available. Either the permanent solution does not exist or yet to be implemented. There are three ITIL terms that we need to be familiar with to understand KEDB. These include Incidents, Problems, and Known Errors. So, what was once a problem is now a known error. In an IT ticketing environment, on an issue occurrence the users reach out to the support team and the support engineer, in turn, would follow the normal steps in the Incident Management process like logging, categorization, prioritization, and immediately hunts the solution for the user. This is where the KEDB steps in. The support engineer would interact with the KEDB in a very similar fashion to any Search engine or Knowledgebase. They search (using the “Known Error” field) and retrieve information to view the “Workaround” field.

Are the KEDB and KMDB the Same?

It is common in the IT world to confuse the KEDB with the Knowledge Management database (KMDB). This is a common question. There are a lot of similarities between Known Errors and Knowledge articles, like the implementation of the KEDB might store its data in the Knowledgebase, however, they are separate entities. Consider the lifecycle of a Problem, and therefore the Known Error which is, after all, just an attribute of that Problem ticket. The Problem should be closed when it has been removed from the system and can no longer affect users or be the cause of Incidents. At this stage, we could retire the Known Error and Workaround as they are no longer useful – although we would want to keep them for reporting so perhaps we wouldn’t delete them. KB articles have a more permanent use. Although they too might be retired, if they refer to an application due to be decommissioned, they don’t have the same lifecycle as a Known Error record. Knowledge articles refer to how systems should work or provide training for users of the system. Known Errors document conditions that are unexpected. These are a few similarities between the Knowledgebase and Known Error Data Base.