2 The Partner Management Model

The management of Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper is structured around the concept of a Management Model. The Management Model defines roles for the operator and the application service provider (SP) and describes the interaction between them. In the context of Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper, an operator is the entity which runs the network in which Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper is installed. The operator has partners who want one or more of their applications to interact with the operator's network. These partners are the application service providers and they can be in-house or external to the operator.

The Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper Partner Management interfaces allow operators to manage these application service providers at increasingly granular levels of control. An application service provider registers with Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper and is given a Service Provider Account. To support tiering, service provider accounts are associated together into Service Provider Account Groups. It is these groups that are associated with Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Within a service provider account there are individual Application Accounts, registered on their respective service provider accounts. As in the case of service provider accounts, these application accounts are grouped together into Application Account Groups. Again, SLAs are associated with applications via the application group.

Finally, the model also includes the idea of the Application Instance, which is tied to a specific instance of the application and is used in the traffic authentication process.

For more information about the Partner Management model, see the Accounts and SLAs Guide.

The Partnership Management module allows for management of:

Service Provider accounts
Application Accounts
Application Groups
Service Provider SLAs:
- Provisioned and enforced in one cluster
- Provisioned and enforced across clusters (used for establishing geo-redundancy)
Service Provider Node SLAs
Application SLAs
- Provisioned and enforced in one cluster
- Provisioned and enforced across clusters (used for establishing geo-redundancy)

Account States

All Service Provider Accounts and Application Accounts are in one of the following states:

Registered

The service provider has requested that an account be registered, but the operator has not yet approved or disapproved it.
Active

The operator has approved the account the service provider registered.
Inactive

The account has been deactivated, either temporarily or as a step toward being deleted.
Update pending

The service provider has requested an update of the account, and this update has not yet been approved by the operator.
Delete pending

The service provider or the operator has requested that the account be deleted. This is an intermediate state. The operator can, for example, use this state to process all charging data records for the account before deleting it.

Note:
Charging data records may still be in the Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper, even when the account information is deleted. Make sure all data has been processed before deleting an account.

Once an account is deleted, all data about the account is removed from the Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper.

The possible state transitions are outlined in Figure 2-1.

Figure 2-1 States and state transitions

Description of "Figure 2-1 States and state transitions"

There are two sets of interfaces in the partner relationship module (PRM) module. The Service Provider interfaces give application service providers access to information relative to their own accounts and applications. The Operator interfaces allow operators to manage their service providers. These include access to a much broader range of management functions.

In the diagram above, the method names in bold can be executed by both the operator and the application service provider. The methods names in non-bold can be executed only by the operator. XXX indicates that the methods are valid for both service provider accounts and application accounts.

PRM Users in the Context of Services Gatekeeper Administrative Users

PRM users are a subsection of all Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper Administrative Users. They are created and managed in the same way as all other Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper Administrative Users, using the Management Users MBean. For more information on managing Administrative Users, see the System Administrator's Guide. At least one PRM-OP user must be set up before the PRM interfaces can be used.

Table 2-1 describes the characteristics of all Administrative Users stored in the Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper database:

Table 2-1 Contents of wlng_mgmt_users Database Table

Field	Type	Description
username	varchar(255)	Authentication name of the administrative user.
state	int(11)	Possible values are: 0: Activated 1: Deactivated Transitional states (Registered, Update pending, Delete pending) are stored temporarily as properties of the account.
type	int(11)	Kind of user. Options are: 0: OAM (Console-based user) 1: PRM-OP (Operator using PRM) 2: PRM-SP (Service Provider using PRM)
password	varchar(255)	Administrative user password. 3DES Encrypted.
userlevel	int(11)	Privilege level of user. See Table 2-2 below for values.
groupname	varchar(255)	Allows administrative us.ers to be grouped for ease of management
stored_ts	bigint(20)	Tablespace

Table 2-2 Privilege Levels

Level	Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper Role Type
1000	Equivalent to Administrative Access on WebLogic Server (WLS). Can: Manage servers and server configuration Deploy applications Control all Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper management functions
666	Equivalent to Deployer Access on WLS. Can: View server configuration and make some changes Have read-write access on Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper management functions
333	Equivalent to Monitor Access on WLS. Can View server configuration Have read-only access to Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper management functions
0	Equivalent to Anonymous Access on WLS. Can: Use servers. PRM-SP users have this privilege level

Note:

Service providers may also have direct access to account management functions via JMX if the service provider has appropriate user permissions. This is a decision made by the operator.