C H A P T E R 2 |
Billing Integration |
You do not need to change your billing implementation to use the Content Delivery Server. You can configure the Content Delivery Server to work with your current billing system through the use of billing adapters.
A billing adapter for postpaid or asynchronous billing converts the information provided by the Content Delivery Server to the format needed by your billing system. The Content Delivery Server posts billing events to a Java Message Service (JMS) queue. You can receive these billing events using a JMS client. The JMS client uses the billing adapter to format the information for your billing system.
A billing adapter for prepaid or synchronous billing is called by the Content Delivery Server as the purchase is being processed. The adapter can dynamically change the price of content, if desired, validate the purchase in real time, or manage billing through an external system such as premium SMS.
You can create your own postpaid billing adapter using the Event Service API if the adapter provided does not meet your needs. You can create your own prepaid billing adapter using the Billing API. See the Sun Java System Content Delivery Server Customization Guide for information on these APIs.
For postpaid billing, the Content Delivery Server provides the Postpaid Service. This service includes a JMS client that processes the billing events in the event queue and generates a file that contains the information that your billing system can use to charge subscribers. The file format can be XML, comma-separated values (CSV), or name-value pairs. See Section 2.2, Working with the Postpaid Service.
No prepaid billing adapters are provided.
The Postpaid Service supports billing systems that charge subscribers after content has been purchased. You can use the Postpaid Service instead of a customized billing adapter if your billing system supports postpaid billing and processes records in one of the following formats:
To use the Postpaid Service, set the following properties in the PostpaidService.properties file. This file is in the $CDS_HOME/deployment/deployment-name/conf directory.
The following table shows the information provided for each billing event:
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