10 Testing Provisioning Using BRM Network Simulator

Learn how to use the Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) Network Simulator to test your telco implementation.

Topics in this document:

About the Network Simulator

You use the Network Simulator to simulate a network provisioning agent. It does so by receiving and processing XML provisioning payload files from the Provisioning DM.

Note:

To use this simulator, the Provisioning DM must be running.

The Network Simulator includes a Perl-based simulator and a Java-based simulator.

The Perl-based simulator (agent_sim.pl) retrieves service order information from the BRM database and generates XML provisioning payload files:

  • If the $PIN_HOME environment variable is set, agent_sim.pl saves the XML file in BRM_home/apps/telco/service_orders with the name SvcOrder_EventObject_id.xml.

  • If the $PIN_HOME environment variable is not set, the XML file is created in the directory where the simulator is launched.

The Java-based simulator (RunSimulator) does the following:

  1. Processes the XML file according to the command-line arguments.

  2. Updates the service order status by calling the PCM_OP_PROV_UPDATE_SVC_ORDER opcode.

Testing Provisioning

To test how a network provisioning agent would process service orders:

  1. Write service order details to an XML provisioning payload file by running the agent_sim.pl script. See "Writing Service Orders to an XML File".

  2. Simulate how the network provisioning agent would process service orders by running the RunSimulator utility. See "Simulating How a Network Agent Processes Service Orders".

Writing Service Orders to an XML File

Note:

Before running Network Simulator, enable provisioning.

To write service orders to an XML file:

  1. Open the CM configuration file (BRM_home/sys/cm/pin.conf).

  2. Set the agent_return entry to 1: 

    - fm_tcf agent_return 1

  3. Ensure that the internal simulator is turned off by setting the simulate_agent entry to 0: 

    - fm_tcf simulate_agent 0

  4. Save the file.

  5. Restart the CM.

  6. Start the Perl-based simulator:

    Perl agent_sim.pl &

  7. Start the Provisioning DM:

    start_dm_prov_telco

    Note:

    Always start the Perl-based simulator before you start the Provisioning DM.

  8. Create a provisioning event.

Simulating How a Network Agent Processes Service Orders

You use BRM's Java-based simulator (RunSimulator) to process an XML provisioning payload file that was created with agent_sim.pl.

To simulate how a network provisioning agent would process your service orders, run the RunSimulator utility with the following commands:

  • To process an XML provisioning payload file, run this command:

    Java RunSimulator -x xml_file

  • To process an XML provisioning payload file and create a service order with its status set to Active: 

    Java RunSimulator -s 0 -x xml_file

    If you include the parameter to change the state of a supplied service order, the utility changes the status of the associated service. For example, when a successful service order is returned, the service, charge offer, and supplementary service (feature) status is set to Active.

For more information about the utility's syntax and parameters, see "RunSimulator".