2 Feature Changes from BRM 7.5 to BRM 12.0

Learn about the feature changes that affect your Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) system and what you must consider when you upgrade from 7.5 to 12.0.

Topics in this document:

For information on planning your upgrade implementation, such as setting up your development and test environments, see "About Upgrading BRM Releases".

BRM Clients

The following are the changes made to the client applications in BRM 12.0.

BRM Clients and Billing Care

In BRM 12.0, the following client applications are supported only from BRM 12.0 Patch Set 2:

  • Customer Center (including Customer Center SDK)

  • GSM Manager Customer Center Extension

  • Collections Center

  • Payment Center

  • Payment Tool

You can use these applications or Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management Billing Care for customer, payment management, and some collection tasks.

For more information, see the following documents:

  • BRM Concepts

  • Billing Care Online Help

Brand Manager

BRM 12.0 no longer supports Brand Manager for creating new brands.

Pricing Center

In BRM 12.0, Pricing Center is supported from BRM 12.0 Patch Set 2. You can use Pricing Center to create and maintain price lists if you are using Pipeline Manager for rating. If you are using Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine (ECE) for rating, you must use Oracle Communications Pricing Design Center for creating and maintaining your price lists and other product offerings.

For more information, see the following documents:

  • BRM Concepts

  • BRM Creating Product Offerings

Changes to Supported Software Versions

Every release can include changes to supported software. Always read the information about software compatibility in the BRM Compatibility Matrix.

Content Manager

The following are the changes made to Content Manager in BRM 12.0.

Content SDK Removed from Content Manager

BRM 12.0 no longer supports Content SDK and the AAA Opcodes associated with Content Manager. You must now use Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management Elastic Charging Engine (ECE) instead for AAA functions.

For more information, see ECE Implementation Guide.

Optional Managers

BRM 12.0 no longer supports the following optional managers:

  • Email Manager

  • IMT Manager

  • RADIUS Manager

    You must now use Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management Elastic Charging Engine (ECE) RADIUS Gateway instead for authorization and authentication tasks. For more information, see ECE Implementation Guide.

  • Resource Reservation Manager

    You must now use Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management Elastic Charging Engine (ECE) to reserve customer account balance resources in advance of a network session. For more information, see ECE Implementation Guide.

  • Vertex Quantum Manager

Service Managers

The following are the changes made to service managers in BRM 12.0.

AAA Managers Not Supported in BRM 12.0

BRM 12.0 no longer supports the following BRM service managers:

  • GSM AAA Manager

  • GPRS AAA Manager

  • Services Framework AAA Manager

You must now use Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management Elastic Charging Engine (ECE) RADIUS Gateway instead for processing AAA requests for BRM services.

For more information, see ECE Implementation Guide.

Voucher Manager

The following are the changes made to Voucher Manager in BRM 12.0.

Voucher Manager Support in BRM 12.0

BRM 12.0 supports Voucher Manager only if you have already installed it in your existing BRM system.

Web Services Manager

The following are the changes made to Web Services Manager in BRM 12.0.

Oracle GlassFish Server Not Supported in BRM 12.0

BRM 12.0 no longer supports Oracle GlassFish Server. You can install Web Services Manager only on the following servers:

  • Oracle WebLogic Server

  • Apache Tomcat server

System Administration

The following are the changes made to system administration in BRM 12.0.

Utility Log File Permissions Changed

To increase security, the permissions for utility log files has been changed to 0640.

  • BRM 7.5 utility log file permissions: 0664

  • BRM 12.0 utility log file permissions: 0640

French Direct Debit Not Supported in 12.0

BRM 12.0 no longer supports French Direct Debit payment processing.

Changed Registry.js Keys in Billing Care SDK

In the Billing Care SDK registry.js file, all instances of the viewModel key were changed to viewmodel.

If your BRM 7.5 system includes custom registry.js files, update all instances of the viewModel key to viewmodel. For more information, see the latest registry.js file packaged with the BRM 12.0 release.

Billing Care SDK Requires CSRF Tokens in AJAX Requests

To improve security, the Billing Care SDK now requires all AJAX requests to include cross-site request forgery (CSRF) tokens.

If you are upgrading from BRM 7.5 to BRM 12.0 Patch Set 3 or later, you must add CSRF tokens to all of your custom AJAX requests sent to the Billing Care SDK. Without the token, the Billing Care SDK will not authorize your custom AJAX requests.

The following shows sample code for adding a CSRF token to an AJAX request:

$.ajax({
   type: "GET",
   dataType: "json",
   url: urlToFetch,
   beforeSend: function (xhr) {
      util.setRequestHeader(xhr)
   },
   contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8"

}).done(function (data) {

}).fail(function (errorThrown) {

}).always(function () {

});

PCM SDK is Now Part of BRM SDK

In BRM 12.0, PCM SDK is a part of BRM SDK and it is installed along with the BRM server. You cannot install PCM SDK independent of the BRM server.

SNMP Utilities Not Supported in 12.0

BRM 12.0 no longer supports SNMP utilities to monitor pipeline processes.

Storing Passwords in Oracle Wallet

In earlier releases, some sensitive information, such as database and account passwords, was stored in the Infranet.properties and pin.conf configuration files.

Now, the BRM Installer by default stores sensitive information in the Oracle wallet and BRM components retrieve the passwords from the Oracle wallet. This ensures that the sensitive information is stored and accessed securely in BRM.

Note:

Infranet.properties and pin.conf configuration files are supported for backward compatibility.

For more information on storing information in Oracle wallet, see the discussion about storing passwords in Oracle wallet in BRM System Administrator's Guide.