Introduction and Roadmap

The following sections describe the audience for and organization of this document:

Document Scope and Audience

The purpose of the document is to provide descriptive information about WebLogic Network Gatekeeper. The following topics are covered:

benefits and possibilities
available functions
support for application development and test
hardware architecture and individual hardware components
software architecture and individual software modules

Intended audience is business developers, marketing and sales personnel, support engineers, system administrators and other personnel with an interest in WebLogic Network Gatekeeper.

Guide to this Document

The document contains the following chapters:

Introduction and Roadmap, informs you about the structure and contents of this document, writing conventions, and other WebLogic Network Gatekeeper related documentation.
WebLogic Network Gatekeeper Introduction, introduces you to WebLogic Network Gatekeeper and its main benefits and possibilities.
Service Descriptions, describes the functionality of the service capabilities available through WebLogic Network Gatekeeper.
Application Development and Test, describes the Web Services APIs and the Application Development Tools for WebLogic Network Gatekeeper.
Service Provider and Application Administration, gives an introduction to the administration related to the applications connected to WebLogic Network Gatekeeper through distributed APIs. It also gives an introduction to WebLogic Network Gatekeeper Partner Management Tools.
Network Interface, describes WebLogic Network Gatekeeper's network interface and some of the prerequisites to be fulfilled before the communication with the network can be set up.
Policy, describes the functions of the policy engine and policy areas covered. It also shows the means for writing custom policies.
Charging, describes the charging possibilities offered by the WebLogic Network Gatekeeper and the means to integrate with external billing and settlemet systems.
Operation, Administration and Maintenance, describes the WebLogic Network Gatekeeper management application and gives an overview of the main Operation, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) tasks. In addition, the chapter describes PRM/CRM integration using WebLogic Network Gatekeeper Partner Management Tools.
Alarm and Event Handling, describes how alarms and events are handled by WebLogic Network Gatekeeper.
Statistics and Performance Data, describes the statistics and performance data generated by WebLogic Network Gatekeeper.
Security, gives an overview of the main security areas covered by WebLogic Network Gatekeeper.
Service Extensibility, describes the means for extending WebLogic Network Gatekeeper with new service APIs and network connectivity.
Hardware Architecture, describes the basic hardware configuration used by WebLogic Network Gatekeeper
Software Architecture Overview, describes the overall WebLogic Network Gatekeeper software architecture.
Software Module Descriptions, describes the individual WebLogic Network Gatekeeper software modules.
Redundancy and Load Balancing, describes the WebLogic Network Gatekeeper fault tolerance, high availability, and load balancing mechanisms from an application and network perspective.

Terminology

The following terms and acronyms are used in this document:

API—Application Programming Interface
Application—A telecom enabled computer application accessed either from a telephony terminal or a computer.
Service Provider—An organization offering services provided by one or more applications to end users.
AS—Application Server
ATE—Application Test Environment
CBC—Content Based Charging
CORBA—Common Object Request Broker Architecture
End User—Person that uses an application. An end user can be identical to a subscriber, for instance in a prepaid service. The end user can also be a non-subscriber, for instance in 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 Service Provider.
ESPA—Extended and value added telecom web services APIs and service capabilities.
HTML—Hypertext Markup Language
IIOP—Internet Inter-ORB Protocol
IN—Intelligent Network
INAP—Intelligent Network Application Part
IOR—Interoperable Object Reference
IP—Internet Protocol
JDBC—Java Database Connectivity, the Java API for database access.
MAP—Mobile Application Part
Mated Pair—Two physically distributed installations of WebLogic Network Gatekeeper nodes sharing a subset of data allowing for high availability between the nodes.
MPP—Mobile Positioning Protocol
NS—Network Simulator
Operator—The Network Gatekeeper owner
ORB—Object Request Broker
OSA—Open Service Access
PAP—Push Access Protocol
Plug-in—A network plug-in the Network Gatekeeper to a network based service node or OSA/Parlay SCS through a specific protocol.
SCF—Service Capability Function or Service Control Function
SCS—Service Capability Server
Service—A network provided service capability.
Service Capability—See Service
SIP—Session Initiation Protocol
SLEE—Service Logic Execution Environment
SLEE Service—A software module that is designed to execute in the SLEE.
SMPP—Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol
SMS—Short Message Service
SMSC—Short Message Service Centre
SNMP—Simple Network Management Protocol
SOAP—Simple Object Access Protocol
SPA—Service Provider APIs
SS7—Signalling System 7
Subscriber—A person or organization that subscribes for an application. The subscriber is charged for the service usage. See End User.
SQL—Structured Query Language
TCP—Transmission Control Protocol
User—An application accessing services through one or more APIs and has a user name and a password or a person working with OAM through the Network Gatekeeper management tool that has an administrative user name and password.
USSD—Unstructured Supplementary Service Data
VAS—Value Added Service
VLAN—Virtual Local Area Network
VPN—Virtual Private Network
XML—Extended Markup Language

Introduction and Roadmap

Document Scope and Audience

Guide to this Document

Terminology

Related Documentation

WebLogic Network Gatekeeper documentation