Implementation Guide for Oracle Self-Service E-Billing > Customizing Oracle Self-Service E-Billing >

Customizing the User Interface Files

The Oracle Self-Service E-Billing user interface-related files is in the following Web application folders (packaged in the application EAR file):

• The _assets. Contains all images, CSS files, and scripts used in the application.
• The _templates. Template files for formatting and screen orientation.

Every JSP can extend any one of these templates.

All Oracle Self-Service E-Billing screens pick up their styles from a common file, swan.css (in the _assets/swan/ folder). This file is imported in all the templates.

All JSP files are in the respective module folders.

UI customization can range from changing the look-and-feel or adding your own struts action classes.

Customizing the Existing Look-and-Feel

The Oracle Self-Service E-Billing UI is based on Tiles definitions. The user interface properties, such as color and font size, are controlled using a style sheet (CSS file).

The stylesheet defines the styles for all defined classes. You can define as many stylesheets as required, however, leave the class name the same as it is in swan.css.

The template files must also import the corresponding customized CSS files as necessary. Then the JSPs will use the new styles.

You can modify the Tiles definitions file to use your own Tiles. All the Tiles definitions are in the ebilling-weblogic-6.2.ear/ebilling-web-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war/WEB-INF/classes directory.

The hierarchy UI-related JSP pages are in the ebilling-weblogic-6.2.ear/ebilling-web-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war/hierarchy directory.

Reporting-related JSP pages are in the ebilling-weblogic-6.2.ear/ebilling-web-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war/reporting directory. If necessary, then customize these JSP pages.

In special cases, when you use the Oracle Self-Service E-Billing presentment engine to generate a report or a search page, the result of the query is not presented by JSP, instead, a set of Velocity templates are used. These templates are defined in the EDX_HOME/templates/common/lib and reporting directories. In the path, EDX_HOME is the directory where you installed Oracle Self-Service E-Billing. Do not touch the VM files in the lib directories. For the files under reporting, you can customize them if necessary. However, most of the time you can customize reports using report XML files without touching the VM files.

Customizing Web Document Styles

Oracle Self-Service E-Billing provides Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as a mechanism for adding style, such as fonts, colors, and spacing, to Web documents to provide a user-customized interface.

The user interface of Oracle Self-Service E-Billing uses industry standards (consistent page layout, navigation bars, bread crumbs, and logically labeled controls) to make a consistent and intuitive user experience. The use of Cascading Style Sheets ensures separation of style from presentation.

The page layout of the Oracle Self-Service E-Billing application consists of the following body areas:

• Pagewrap
  • Top_page
  • Logo
  • Userlinks
  • Tabbar and tabs
  • Subtabbar and subtabs
  • Sidecontent
    • Quicklinks: Header and Quicklinklist
    • Reportcontext: Header and Reportcontextlist
  • Maincontent
    • Breadcrumb
    • Pageheading
    • Pagetabs (When applicable)
    • Errormessage
    • successmessage
    • Subtitle (Repeats at the top of each module)
    • Buttonbar downloadPrint (When applicable)
    • Buttonbar (When applicable)
    • Contextbox
    • Infomessage (When applicable)
    • Buttonbar (When applicable)
• Clearline
• Footer. All style sheets reside in the _assets/swan directory. The primary style sheet is swan.css, which is the only style sheet that the application uses with the exception of all Printer Friendly-rendered pages.

  Oracle Self-Service E-Billing calls for the Cascading Style Sheet file from the main templates, which are in the _templates directory. The JSP file names are:

  • simplelayout.jsp
  • simplelayout1.jsp
  • popupLayout.jsp
  • paymentLayout.jsp
  • dashBoardLayout.jsp

Using Custom JSP Pages and Action Classes

The user interface components are in the ebilling-weblogic-6.2.ear/ebilling-web-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war file.

It is possible to add your own UI components, such as JSP, JavaScripts and so on. After you create your own action class, you must modify the struts.xml file to register it.

Using Velocity Templates

The Oracle Self-Service E-Billing reporting UI is based on Velocity templates, an open source project. The product offers a set of preconfigured templates to implement common UI features such as paging, sorting, charting, print-friendly, and download.

You can customize these preconfigured templates either by modifying them directly or by copying and then modifying. If you do copy and modify, then configure the report XML files to pick up your new templates.

About Customizing Reports

All of the report XML files defined in the EDX_HOME/config/rpt directory (or the EDX_HOME\config\rpt directory on Windows) are for the preconfigured Oracle Self-Service E-Billing user interface. In the path, EDX_HOME is the directory where you installed Oracle Self-Service E-Billing.

You can add your own report XML files by following the instructions in Using the Reporting Engine. Your reports can use either the default Velocity templates provided with Oracle Self-Service E-Billing or your own templates.

Changing the URL Prefix

Oracle Self-Service E-Billing uses ebilling as its URL prefix. However, you can change this to fit your deployment environment. The prefix is defined in the application.xml file in the ebilling-weblogic-6.2.ear/META-INF directory. All URLs from Oracle Self-Service E-Billing use a relative URL. This ensures that after you change the URL prefix, the application can still work.

The Oracle Self-Service E-Billing-related action classes and other Struts are defined as a (Struts) module called ebilling. Access all resources in the EAR file, including Struts actions, images, JSP pages, and so on, with this prefix, for example:

http://host:port/ebilling/reporting/report.action

Using Spring (XMA) Configuration Files

Oracle Self-Service E-Billing uses Spring to manage JavaBean creation and transactions. The configuration of Hibernate is also through Spring. These files are also called XMA configuration files in Oracle Self-Service E-Billing terms and exist in the EDX_HOME/xma directory (or the EDX_HOME\xma directory on Windows). In the path, EDX_HOME is the directory where you installed Oracle Self-Service E-Billing. These are the core configuration files of Oracle Self-Service E-Billing and you must not modify them unless instructed in this document.

Possible reasons to customize these files include:

• To enable Hibernate show_sql.
• To extend Hierarchy Management, such as adding a new link target type, reimplementing a hierarchy search interface such as IAssignedObjectProvider, inserting a new loader into the OLTPProductionLoader job, configuring a new event handler to handle hierarchy events, or configuring the hierarchy UI behavior. For more information about extending Hierarchy, see Hierarchy Developer's Guide for Oracle Self-Service E-Billing.
• To configure the batch report job, to send email, for example.

Using the OLTP Schema

OLTP is the Oracle Self-Service E-Billing transactional data schema. Oracle Self-Service E-Billing expects access to product tables to go through the Oracle Self-Service E-Billing APIs. Do not change the existing product schema. However, you can add your own customization tables.

Using the OLAP Schema

OLAP is the Oracle Self-Service E-Billing data warehouse. It is a non-transaction schema used to save billing information and has no APIs for access. These tables are accessed directly through report XML files. For information on how to use report XML files to retrieve data from the OLAP schema, check the report XML files used to generate various billing reports. These files are defined in the EDX_HOME/config/rpt directory (or the EDX_HOME\config\rpt directory on Windows). In these directories, EDX_HOME is the directory where you installed Oracle Self-Service E-Billing.

The OLAP schema includes three kinds of tables:

• OLTP-OLAP Synchronization-Related Tables. Because OLAP is a non-transactional schema, it has no (or very limited) UI transactional operations. However, it requires transaction data to report on, for example, hierarchy information. This information is synchronized from OLTP to OLAP at real time. The tables related to this operation are:
  • EDX_RPT_ACCOUNT_WSPACE
  • EDX_RPT_ACCOUNT_XREF (Not used)
  • EDX_RPT_CC_CHARGE_WSPACE
  • EDX_RPT_HIERARCHY_NODE_PERIOD
  • EDX_RPT_HIERARCHY_TREE_DIM
  • EDX_RPT_HIERARCHY_TYPE_DIM
  • EDX_RPT_HIERARCHY_XREF_DIM
  • EDX_RPT_USER_HIERARCHY_WSPACE (Not used)
  • EDX_RPT_USER_SERVICE_WSPACE (Not used)

    Do not customize these tables. Operations on these tables are read-only.

• Dimensional Tables. Except the ones described in this topic, the remaining dimensional tables are used to save dimensional data such as accounts, services, dates, periods, and so on. Also most all the dimensional tables have some flexible fields which are for customization. Use the flexible fields to hold your custom information instead of adding your own columns. You can also create new dimensional tables.
• Fact Tables. Fact tables are used to hold the fact information such as call details or summaries. You can add new columns to the fact tables, if necessary, or add your own fact tables.

Never make any changes that could break the backward compatibility of the DB schema, such as changing the column type or renaming a column or a table.

The Oracle Self-Service E-Billing screen JSPs pick the label from the property file using a unique key.

Using the Data Dictionary

Oracle Self-Service E-Billing provides a Data Dictionary with details about the OLAP and OLTP schema tables.

The Oracle Self-Service E-Billing Data Dictionary is available in both PDF and HTML formats and is in the following directories:

• EDX_HOME/doc/api/datadictionary/html/E-Billing_oltpindex.html
• EDX_HOME/doc/api/datadictionary/html/E-Billing_olapindex.html
• EDX_HOME/doc/api/datadictionary/pdf/E-Billing_oltpindex.pdf
• EDX_HOME/doc/api/datadictionary/pdf/E-Billing_olapindex.pdf

In the paths, EDX_HOME is the directory where you installed Oracle Self-Service E-Billing.

Repackaging EAR Files

Whenever you want to modify a JSP, add a new action class, or add an EJB, you must repackage the EAR file.

When repackaging the EAR file, make sure you do not remove existing components and only modify the components that are recommended as modifiable in this guide, such as JSP pages, CSS files, the app-resources.jar file, and so on.

Auditing Database Administration Activity

Oracle Self-Service E-Billing does not audit database administrator activity. However, to remain compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), you must implement auditing functionality that documents each time an administrator logs in, creates new tables or attributes, deletes information including tables, attributes, or transaction details, or runs an external script against the Oracle Self-Service E-Billing database.

Identifying the Installed Version of Oracle Self-Service E-Billing

The installed product version of Oracle Self-Service E-Billing is stored in the EDX_VERSION OLAP database table.