This document provides a high-level account of Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper, its structure and its capabilities, consisting of:
An overview of how it works and what benefits it provides
An explanation of the interfaces it offers third-party application developers, including a description of the tools it furnishes for development and testing
A summary view of its internals, including:
Service capabilities
Operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM) mechanisms
Policy enforcement
Security
Billing capabilities
Integration with PRM/CRMs and OSS tools
Product extensibility
A description of software architecture
This document will be of use to anyone who needs a high-level understanding of how Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper works. This includes third-party application developers who wish to integrate telephony-based functionality into their products and operator-based system developers who wish to extend the functionality of Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper or to integrate it with PRM or OSS tools. It also includes system administrators charged with installing and maintaining Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper. Managers, support engineers, and sales and marketing people will also find information of value here.
Service Extensibility. An overview of extending Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper by creating modules to support additional application service providers and/or network connectivity interfaces
Standards and Specifications. Detailed description of the standards and specifications supported by Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper’s application-facing interfaces, network-facing protocols, and security mechanisms
Terminology
The following terms and acronyms are used in this document:
3GPP—3rd Generation Partnership Project, a collaborative group of telecom standards bodies
Account—A registered application or service provider. An account belongs to an account group, which is tied to a common SLA.
Account group—Multiple registered service providers or applications that share a common SLA
Administrative user—Someone who has privileges on the Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper management tool. This person has an administrative user name and password.
Alarm—The result of an unexpected event in the system, often requiring corrective action.
API—An application programming interface
Application—A TCP/IP based, telecom-enabled program accessed from either a telephony terminal or a computer
Application-facing interface—The interface that Application Service Providers use to interact with Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper
Application Service Provider—An organization offering application services to end users through a telephony network
AS—An application server
Application Instance—An Application Service Provider from the perspective of internal Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper administration. An Application Instance has a user name and a password
CBC—Charging based on the nature of the content delivered, not on time used or simple per-use cost. Content based charging.
CDR—Charging Data Record
Communication Service—A facade and an enabler that together form the path through which requests travel in Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper. Each communication service corresponds to a particular service capability.
CORBA—Common Object Request Broker Architecture
CPU—Central Processing Unit
CRM—Customer Relationship Management
DMZ—Demilitarized Zone, a physical or logical subnetwork that contains and exposes an organization's external services to a larger, untrusted network
EAR—Enterprise Archive file
EJB—Enterprise Java Bean
Enabler—The Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper layer that performs policy evaluation, routing, and protocol translation. It provides network-facing interfaces.
End user—The ultimate consumer of the services that an application provides. An end user can be the same as the network subscriber, as in the case of a prepaid service or the end user can be a non-subscriber, as in the case of an automated mail-ordering application where the subscriber is the mail-order company and the end user is a customer to this company
Enterprise Operator—See Application Service Provider
Enterprise Service Bus—A middleware component that supports messaging, routing, XML data transformation, and service orchestration
ETSI—The European Telecommications Standards Institute, a telecom standards body
Event—A traceable, expected occurrence in the system, of interest to the operator
EDR—Event Data Record
EWS—Extended Web Services, a set of Web Services interfaces developed by Oracle offering access to network functionality not covered by Parlay X.
Facade—A set of interfaces exposed to application service developers. A facade functions as a view of an enabler.
HA—Mechanisms set up to insure high availability
HTML—Hypertext Markup Language
HTTP—Hypertext Transfer Protocol
INAP—Intelligent Network Application Part, a telephony signalling protocol
Interceptor Stack—A flexible set of chained evaluation steps used in Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper
IP—Internet Protocol
JDBC—Java Database Connectivity, the Java API for database access
JEE—Java Enterprise Edition
JMS—Java Message Service
JMX—Java Management Extensions
LDAP—Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
Location Uncertainty Shape—A geometric shape surrounding a base point specified in terms of latitude and longitude. It is used in terminal location.
MAP—Mobile Application Part
Marshall— Record the state and codebase(s) of an object in such a way that when the marshalled object is "unmarshalled," a copy of the original object is obtained, possibly by automatically loading the class definitions of the object.
Mated pair—Two physically distributed installations of Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper nodes sharing a subset of data allowing for high availability between the nodes
MIB—Management Information Base
MLP—Mobile Location Protocol
MM7—A multimedia messaging protocol specified by 3GPP
MMS—Multimedia Message Service or an instance of this service
MMSC—Multimedia Message Service Center
Network plug-in—The Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper module that implements the interface to a network node or OSA/Parlay SCS through a specific protocol
NS—Network Simulator
OAM—Operation, Administration, and Maintenance
OASIS—The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, an e-business and web standards consortium
OCSG—Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper
Operator—The party that manages Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper. Usually the network operator
On-boarding—Registering applications and service providers to enable their access to Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper and the underlying network
ORB—Object request broker
OSA/Parlay—The Open Service Access interfaces used by a Parlay gateways
OSS—Operation Support Systems
Out of the box—The level of functionality available in the default installation of Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper
Parlay X—A set of telecom Web Services interfaces specified by the Parlay Group
Plug-in—See Network Plug-in
Plug-in Manager—The Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper module charged with routing an application-initiated request to the appropriate network plug-in
POJO—Plain Old Java Object
Presence information—A status indicator that conveys the accessibility and the willingness of a potential communication partner
Presentity—A supplier of presence information.
PRM—Partner Relationship Management
Quotas—An access rule based on an aggregated number of invocations. See also Rates
RAM—Random Access Memory
RAID—Redundant Array of Independent Disks
Rates—An access rule based on allowable invocations per time period. See also Quotas
RESTful—Interfaces that follow Representation State Transfer style
Rf—The Diameter offline charging mode
RMI—Remote Method Invocation
Ro—The Diameter online charging mode
SAML—Security Assertion Markup Language
SCF—Service Capability Function or Service Control Function, in the OSA/Parlay sense.
SCS—Service Capability Server, in the OSA/Parlay sense. Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper can interact with these on its network-facing side
Service Capability—Support for a specific kind of traffic within Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper. Defined in terms of communication services
SIP—Session Initiation Protocol
SLA—A service level agreement
SMPP—Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol
SMS—Short Message Service, or an instance of this service
SMSC—Short Message Service Center
SNMP—Simple Network Management Protocol
SOA—Service Oriented Architecture
SOAP—A protocol for exchanging Web Services messages
SPI—Service Provider Interface
SQL—Structured Query Language
SS7—Signalling System #7, a signaling protocol used in traditional telecom networks
Subscriber—A person or organization that signs up for access to an application. The subscriber is charged for the application service usage. See End user
TCP—Transmission Control Protocol
TUPS—Transaction Units Per Second
URI—Uniform Resource Identifier
URL—Uniform Resource Locator
USSD—Unstructured Supplementary Service Data
VAS—Value Added Service
VASP—Value Added Service Provider
VLAN—Virtual Local Area Network
VPN—Virtual Private Network
W3C—The World Wide Web Consortium, a web standards group
WAP Push—A protocol for sending WAP content (an encoded message including a link to a WAP address) that is pushed to a subscriber’s handset
Watcher—A consumer of presence information
WS-Security—An OASIS security standard for Web Services
WSDL —Web Services Definition Language
XML—Extensible Markup Language
Related Documentation
This architectural overview is a part of the Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper documentation set. The other documents include:
Additionally, many documents in the Oracle WebLogic Server documentation set are of interest to users of Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper, including:
