39 Adding or Changing Login Options

Learn how to create a login and password for custom applications to access Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM).

Topics in this document:

• About Customizing the Login Account for Your Application

• Creating Several admin_client Services with Different Permissions

About Customizing the Login Account for Your Application

You can use the default root account to log in. However, to properly manage access and permissions to BRM, you must create a BRM account for each custom application that you create.

To change the default login for your application, perform the following tasks:

1. Use Billing Care to create a BRM account with pcm_client service for your application.

   See "Creating an Account for Your Application".

   You can create an account for each instance of the application to manage permissions to a fine detail of control.

2. Provide the login and password to the application at runtime. See "Providing Login and Password to Your Custom Application" for instructions.

Creating an Account for Your Application

To prevent unwanted billing, the account that owns your custom /service/pcm_client and /service/admin_client services must be nonbilling. You create a nonbilling account by specifying the accounting type to PIN_BILL_TYPE_UNDEFINED.

To set up a nonbilling account:

1. Create an /account object.

   For information on creating objects, see "Creating Custom Fields and Storable Classes".

2. Change its PIN_FLD_BILL_TYPE value to PIN_BILL_TYPE_UNDEFINED.

3. Use Billing Care to create an account with service/pcm_client for your custom application.

Providing Login and Password to Your Custom Application

You can use one of the following methods to pass the login and password to your application:

• You can have the application user enter the login and password at runtime. This is the most secure way because there are no configuration files to be read.

  To use this method, call PCM_CONTEXT_OPEN in your application and build a login flist.

• You can get the login name and password from the application configuration file. This method allows the application to start automatically and reconnect. However, you must secure the configuration file to prevent unauthorized access.

  To use this method, call PCM_CONNECT in your application to open a PCM context.

  This routine reads the login type, name and password entries from your application configuration file. It then calls PCM_CONTEXT_OPEN with an input flist containing values for login type, name, and password from the configuration file.

  For an example of how to use this routine, see sample_app.c located in BRM_SDK_home/source/samples/apps/c.

Configuring System Passwords

After you create the new service and account for your application, edit the userid entry in your application configuration file to point to your new service.

You can specify that your application requires a login name and password to connect to BRM by setting login_type to 1 in the login information section of your application's configuration file.

In your application's configuration file, include entries for login type, name, and password using this syntax:

- nap   login_type    login_type 
- nap   login_name    login_name
- nap   login_pw      password

For example:

- nap   login_type    1 
- nap   login_name    Portal_user
- nap   login_pw      password

Creating Several admin_client Services with Different Permissions

You can create several admin_client services with different permissions to manage access and permissions to BRM components. Permissions are stored in the /service/admin_client object in the PIN_FLD_PERMITTEDS array.

1. Create the /service/admin_client objects that are owned by several accounts.

   For information on creating objects, see "Creating Custom Fields and Storable Classes".

2. Add as many permissions to the service permissions array (PIN_FLD_PERMITTEDS) as you want.

   For information about the array's format, see the /service/admin_client storable class specification.