4 Integrating Composable Services with ECE for Rated Event Publishing

Learn about integrating Oracle Communications Elastic Charging Engine (ECE) Charging Gateway Function (CGF) composable service and Kafka-based rated event publishing with an existing ECE cloud native deployment.

Topics in this document:

About ECE Composable Services Rated Event Publishing

The CGF composable service supports rated event publishing by using Kafka to stream rated events and rated CDRs to downstream systems. ECS can be optionally configured to publish rated events to Kafka, where the CGF composable service processes the events and publishes rated CDRs for BRM and other consumers.

The CGF composable service also supports publication of TMF and 3GPP-aligned rated CDR formats, improving interoperability and enabling standardized downstream processing. This integration reduces dependency on the Oracle database and removes the need for ECE Rated Event Formatter.

Integrating the CGF Composable Service for Rated Event Publishing

You can integrate the ECE CGF composable service and Kafka into an existing ECE deployment to enable Kafka-based rated event publication.

In the existing ECE publication architecture, ECS publishes rated events through the Rated Event Formatter (REF). REF processes rated events and stores the resulting rated records in the ECE database for downstream systems such as BRM.

In the integrated CGF and ECE architecture, ECS publishes rated events to Kafka. CGF consumes the rated events, processes them, and publishes rated CDRs to Kafka, where they can be consumed by BRM and other downstream consumers.

Note:

ECE includes a configuration entry for switching between Kafka-based publication and REF-based publication.

Architecture Overview

Figure 4-1 shows the architecture for Kafka-based rated event publication in an integrated ECE and ECE composable services environment.

Figure 4-1 Architecture for ECE Composable Services Rated Event Publication


Description of Figure 4-1 follows
Description of "Figure 4-1 Architecture for ECE Composable Services Rated Event Publication"

Note:

In this architecture, Kafka 1 and Kafka 2 may be combined into a single Kafka deployment, or Kafka 2 may operate as an independent external component.

In Figure 4-1, you see how ECE and ECE composable services work together for rated event publication:

  1. The Session Management Function (SMF) and Policy Control Function (PCF) generate charging and spending limit control requests and notifications, while the NRF supports service discovery for charging-related network functions.

  2. The CHF acts as the public ingress point for 5G network traffic, forwarding requests requiring rating or spending limit control processing to ECS through the ECS bridge.

  3. ECS processes these requests and generates rated events and charging-related notifications to Kafka.

  4. The CGF consumes rated events from Kafka and transforms them into structured CDRs.

    The CGF also interacts with the persistence layer to store rated CDR metadata for deduplication.

  5. Once processed, the CGF publishes rated CDRs back to Kafka, making them available to BRM and other downstream systems.

  6. These downstream systems consume the CDRs for purposes such as charging and billing.

Note:

For guidelines on BRM consumption of Kafka rated events, see BRM Loading Rated Events.