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The management of WebLogic Network Gatekeeper is structured around the concept of a Management Model. The Management Model defines roles for the operator and the application service provider and describes the interaction between them. In the context of WebLogic Network Gatekeeper, an operator is the entity which runs the network in which Network 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 WebLogic Network Gatekeeper Partner Management interfaces allow operators to manage these application service providers at increasingly granular levels of control. An application service provider registers with WebLogic Network 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 or 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.
The basic structure of the Partner Management module is shown below.
All Service Provider Accounts and Application Accounts are in one of the following states:
The service provider has requested that an account be registered, but the operator has not yet approved or disapproved it.
The operator has approved the account the service provider registered.
The account has been deactivated, either temporarily or as step toward being deleted.
The service provider has requested an update of the account, and this update has not yet been approved by the operator.
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 Network 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 Network Gatekeeper.
The possible state transitions are outlined in Figure 3-2.
There are two sets of interfaces in the 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 are a subsection of all Network Gatekeeper Administrative Users. They are created and managed in the same way as all other WLNG Administrative Users, using the Management Users MBean. For more information on managing Administrative Users, see the “Managing Management Users and Management User Groups” chapter in the System Administrator’s Guide, a separate document in this set. At least one PRM-OP user must be set up before the PRM interfaces can be used.
As stored in the Network Gatekeeper database, all Administrative Users have the following characteristics:
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Privilege level of user. See Table 3-2 below for values
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