Glossary
action
A specific operation to be performed by a system during solution processing. An action is an interface to be implemented by some system.
action family
A group of actions, designated by action codes, that can be performed against an entity. There are two types of action families, service action families and technical action families.
Activate Technical Order (ATO)
A provider function that generates activation commands for and manages dialogs with specific network devices, based on activation-relevant lines in a technical order.
application role
A type of system in IT architecture. In a multi-layered fulfillment solution, application roles correspond to a fulfillment system type. Examples of application roles include service order management, service and resource management, and activation.
artifact
A general term for the things you can define in Design Studio, such as entities and data elements.
ASAP
Oracle Communications ASAP equips telecommunications service providers with a single platform for automated service activation. ASAP receives service requests from any source and transmits the required service activation information to any destination network device.
ASAP's core architecture isolates business semantics (rules and behavior) from technology semantics (interface implementations and protocols). This architecture allows ASAP to handle multiple, heterogeneous network technologies and supports various interfaces.
base type element
A data element from which other data elements obtain attributes.
To increase modeling efficiency when modeling simple and structured data elements in Design Studio, you can create new data elements that derive from existing base types. Rather than referencing one of the primitive types (String, Boolean, Integer, and so forth), you reference another data element as their data type. In Design Studio, this is called deriving from a base type element, where the new element automatically obtains the information in the base element.
See data element for more information.
BIRT
(Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) An Eclipse-based, open-source reporting system for web applications, especially those based on Java and Java EE. BIRT has two main components: a report designer based on Eclipse, and a run-time component that you can add to your application server.
build
A process that updates existing resources and creates new resources. You run builds against projects to create or modify workspace resources. The type of project determines the type of build. For example, when you run a build for a Java project, the build converts each Java source file (.java files) into one or more executable class files (.class files).
Calculate Service Order (CSO)
A provider function that takes as input order items on a customer order and generates as output order items in a service order. To convert customer order lines into service order lines, CSO uses relationships and mappings defined between products and customer facing services.
Calculate Technical Order (CTO)
A provider function that calculates the difference between a current and requested state of a configuration, identifies the technical actions that are required to achieve the requested changes, and creates a technical order (based on the required technical actions and the dependencies between technical actions) to effect the change in the network.
cartridge
A collection of entities and data defined in Design Studio and packaged in an archive file for deployment to a run-time server. In Design Studio, you build cartridges in cartridge projects. You can create your own custom cartridges to extend Oracle Communications applications. Additionally, you can obtain from Oracle customized cartridges that support integration with other common applications, and cartridge packs that bundle cartridges containing data for particular technology domains.
cartridge designer
A person tasked with design of a deployable component spanning a single product domain. This person is considered an expert for a product in Oracle Communications and focuses on design in a single product domain. Some cartridge designers may be competent in this role for more than one product domain.
Cartridge Management Web Service
A web service that enables life cycle management of cartridge project (for example, deploy, undeploy, redeploy, and so forth).
cartridge project
A Design Studio project that contains a collection of application-specific entities and data. The collection of entities is packaged into an archive file, which you can deploy to a run-time environment.
Cartridge projects are the only Design Studio projects that are deployable to run-time environments.
clean build
A build that resolves any dependencies or similar errors from all previous build results. Clean builds update all resources within the scope of the build.
composite design pattern
A design pattern that leverages the logic of existing design patterns and combines that logic with its own configuration. The ability to share logic among design patterns enables you to define common logic in a single design pattern and leverage that logic, as required. When users run a composite design pattern, the design pattern presents all of the fields, pages, and custom logic defined in all of the leveraged design patterns. See design pattern.
customer order
A type of order processed by OSM, where the subjects of the order line actions are products.
central order management (COM)
An application role that accepts customer orders from CRM systems and orchestrates the orders among multiple BRM (billing and revenue management), SOM (service order management), WFM (workforce management), and SCM (supply chain management) system instances.
Data Dictionary
A logical collection of data elements and data types in a workspace, enabling you to leverage common definitions across an entire Oracle Communications solution. For example, the Data Dictionary enables you to create order templates, atomic actions, and service specifications, and share the data defined for those entities across your OSM, ASAP, and Inventory applications.
Entities in a workspace contribute data types to the Data Dictionary, and data schemas in a workspace (which are accessible across all projects) contribute data elements to the Data Dictionary. The Data Dictionary enables you to integrate and correlate data models for multiple applications, reduce the size and complexity of a solution model, simplify the application integration by eliminating data translation among applications, and validate data model integrity. See alsocdata schema.
data element
A structured or simple type data definition. When modeling data for a project, you create data elements that you can reuse throughout your model. There are two types of data elements: simple data elements and structured data elements.
See simple data element and structured data element for more information.
data model
The data configuration required by your solution design. A data model includes simple and structured data elements that are defined in data schemas. Design Studio refers to the logical collection of all data schemas and data types in the workspace as the Data Dictionary. See simple data element, structured data element, and Data Dictionary for more information.
data modeler
A person responsible for designing the data types and structures necessary to support a cartridge or solution.
data schema
An XML schema that provides a formal description of a data model, expressed in terms of constraints and data types governing the content of elements and attributes.
All data elements are created and saved in data schemas, which can be accessible across all projects in a workspace. Design Studio automatically creates a project-specific data schema when you create a cartridge project. You can use this default schema to contain the data you require to model the project, you can create multiple schemas in the same project, or you can create schemas in common projects. You can model your cartridge project using data from any combination of these data schemas.
Design and Assign Service Order (DASO)
A provider function that assembles a future-state design configuration for a customer facing service. DASO takes as input the existing configuration. This provider function interprets the constraints of the request, and generates as output a service design configuration containing all data required for delivery.
design pattern
A template containing a self-describing set of entities that can be applied to a Design Studio workspace. Solution designers use design patterns to deliver to end-users sets of pre-configured entities (and their relationships) that serve some domain-specific function. Design patterns enable you to create complex modeling patterns using a wizard. This approach reduces implementation time and effort.
Design Studio
An integrated design environment for the development of solutions based on the Oracle Communications OSS Applications. Design Studio enables solution designers to configure application-specific and multi-application solutions by leveraging application-specific concepts. Design Studio is built on an open architecture based on the Eclipse framework, and it uses a wide variety of innovative technologies.
editor
An editor is a type of view that enables you to edit data, define parameters, and configure settings. Editors contain menus and toolbars specific to that editor and can remain open across different perspectives. You can open entities in editors at any time to modify existing projects and elements.
entity
A functional unit created and edited in Design Studio; for example, tasks, processes, physical and logical resources, and projects. Entities are collected in projects and deployed to run-time environments to support your business processes.
enumerations
Values defined for data elements that are available for selection in a run-time environment. For example, you can define a set of values for data elements that appear as lists in run-time environments.
environment project
A project that enables you to manage the attributes associated with your run-time environments, including connection attributes, projects ready to be deployed, projects previously deployed, and associated project attributes such as the version and build numbers.
Exchange Format
An XML document based on the data model defined for Design Studio projects. The XML document is generated by a project build. The Exchange Format represents the output of Design Studio configuration in a published XML format, facilitates the exchange of solution modeling information between Design Studio and other systems or applications, and enables you to extend Design Studio functionality.
extended entity
An entity with defined attributes that you leverage when creating new, similar entities. When you extend one entity from another, the target entity inherits all of the data elements defined for the extended entity. In Design Studio, you can extend orders and tasks.
Inherited data elements are read-only. If you extend an entity that includes structured data elements, you can add any number of additional simple and structured child elements.
feature
A package of plug-ins that create a single, installable, and updatable unit. Features are delivered as JAR files, and each plug-in included in a feature is included as a separate JAR file.
Design Studio is a collection of features and plug-ins that you install with a single executable archive file.
fulfillment
Operations that fulfill a customer's order, such as providing, modifying, resuming, or canceling a customer's requested products and services.
guided assistance
A range of context-sensitive learning aides mapped to specific editors and views in the user interface. For example, when working in editors, you can open the Guided Assistance dialog box for Help topics, cheat sheets, and recorded presentations that are applicable to that editor.
incremental build
A build performed automatically in Design Studio when you save resources. You can disable incremental building and manually run builds if, for example, you want to finish implementing cartridge changes before building the project.
manifest
A file that can contain information about the files packaged in a JAR file. By editing information that the manifest contains, you enable the JAR file to serve a variety of purposes.
All Oracle Communications features have manifest file.
metadata
The data definitions you model for entities, specifications, actions, and all other Design Studio artifacts.
model project
A collection of data elements that can be referenced by other projects in a workspace. Model projects include business entities and schema entities that are not specific to any one Oracle Communications application and that enable you to leverage common definitions and share that data across a solution.
model variable
A variable that you create as a placeholder for environment-specific values that you will need at run time.
When you create cartridge projects, some of the information you provide may depend on a specific environment. If you have environment-specific values for variables that you will need at run time, you can create tokens for the variables and later define values for each environment in which you will use the variable. See token for more information.
namespace
A method for uniquely naming elements and attributes in an XML document. Design Studio supports entity and cartridge namespaces. You pair the entity or cartridge name with a namespace name to create a fully qualified namespace. For example, you can pair entity names with a namespace name to enable different groups of Design Studio users to create different entities without concern for naming conflicts. Services can be implemented independently by different teams and then deployed into a single run-time environment.
Network Integrity
Oracle Communications Network Integrity enables you to keep two data sources (such as an inventory system and a live network) synchronized. This improves data accuracy, which increases your service provisioning success rate. It enables better business planning, based on having an accurate view of your inventory, and supports scheduled or ad-hoc audits to ensure alignment of inventory with your network. Network Integrity can also be used as a convenient way to load initial network data into your inventory system.
operator
A person responsible for managing a product run-time system, performing functions such as installing cartridges to production systems.
optimize deploy
Optimize deploy is a method of deployment that, when enabled, attempts to deploy only the changes you have made in your Design Studio cartridge project. For example, you can use optimize deploy when testing or debugging changes to your cartridge data.
Oracle Communications Design Studio for ASAP
A feature included in the Design Studio preconfigured installation that you use to define service actions, network actions, and scripts for service activation.
See feature for more information.
Oracle Communications Design Studio for Inventory
A feature included in the Design Studio preconfigured installation that you use to define service and resource definitions, rules, and domain-specific metadata.
See feature for more information.
Oracle Communications Design Studio for Network Integrity
A feature included in the Design Studio preconfigured installation that you use to configure network discovery, assimilation, and reconciliation behavior.
See feature for more information.
Oracle Communications Design Studio for Order and Service Management
A feature included in the Design Studio preconfigured installation that you use to define solutions for OSS service order management and for BSS central order management, respectively.
See feature for more information.
Oracle Communications Design Studio for Order and Service Management Orchestration
A feature included in the Design Studio preconfigured installation that you use to define solutions for BSS central order management.
See feature for more information.
Oracle WebLogic Server
Oracle's application server for building and deploying enterprise Java EE applications. The WebLogic server hosts the Design Studio application servers.
orchestration
The process used to manage the fulfillment of a complex order. Order fulfillment often requires interaction with many fulfillment systems. Various dependencies may require that these interactions be run in a specific order to ensure that order items are sent to the proper systems, and that the required steps, in the proper sequence, are run.
Orchestrate Customer Order (OCO)
A provider function that decomposes and distributes lines of customer orders. OCO takes simple offers, bundled offers, and products as input and creates child orders for use in other fulfillment functions and systems.
Orchestrate Service Order (OSO)
A provider function that decomposes and distributes lines of a service order. OSO creates requests to SRM systems to build service designs and delivery plans, then creates a child order to execute the delivery plan.
Orchestrate Technical Order
A provider function that coordinates the delivery of changes to a network based on a set of technical actions defined in a technical order. Orchestrate Technical Order decomposes a technical order into order components that are used to make changes or perform operations in activation, workforce management, supply chain management, and automated test systems. For example, this provider function determines which resources to ship to customers, whether technicians must be dispatched to complete physical work in the network, and what commands to execute on devices in the network.
Order and Service Management (OSM)
Oracle Communications Order and Service Management (OSM) coordinates the order fulfillment functions required to complete a customer order created in a customer relationship management (CRM) system, or other order-source system. As an order management system, OSM receives and recognizes customer orders and coordinates the actions to fulfill the order across provisioning, shipping, inventory, billing, and other fulfillment systems. OSM occupies a central place in order management solutions.
order subject type
A classification of orders based on the type of entity acted upon. Order subjects can be of customer, service, or technical types. Order lines are requests against items of one order subject type. For example, a product offer line item is a request against a customer order; a customer facing service line item is a request against a service order; and a resource facing service or resource line item is a request against a technical order.
persisted data element
A data element defined on a conceptual model entity. Only persisted data elements are added to Inventory specifications when you realize the conceptual model entity. Persisted data elements are required throughout the lifecycle of a service.
perspective
A defined set and layout of views and editors in the workbench window.
Perspectives determine how information appears in the workbench, in menus, and in toolbars. Each perspective contains a default set of views and editors, which you can customize. The Design Studio perspectives work together with other perspectives that are used for implementation, debugging, builds, and version control.
plug-in
Modular, extendable, and sharable units of code that enable integration of tools within Eclipse. Each plug-in specifies its own dependencies and specifies the set of Java packages it provides. Additionally, plug-ins integrate with other plug-ins.
Plug-ins can be exported as directories or JAR files, shared among different applications, and grouped into features.
POMS
Persistent Object Modeling Service. POMS provides the modeling language, tooling, and framework for modeling entities, the relationship between entities and capabilities that entities have. POMS then generates the plain old Java objects (POJOs) that represent the entities and the relationships between the entities and persists them in a relational database schema.
POMS generates a Java interface as well as a Java implementation with the annotations required by JPA, specifically the EclipseLink JPA implementation, which is required for managing the persistence of the objects. The service also provides framework that provides methods for performing CRUD operations on the entities within a transaction.
The metadata that represent the modeling language is called Entity Relationship Model Language (ERML).
product
A conceptual model entity that represents something that your business sells. Because Design Studio is primarily used for service fulfillment rather than sales, products are often identifiers associated with information from other systems.
Project
An entity that contains artifacts (entities, data, rules, code, and so forth) that you use to model and deploy Design Studio cartridges. Your solution uses various types of projects. For example, you use projects for version management, for single sourcing data, for resource organization, and to build cartridges that can be deployed to a server.
You can create various types of projects and you can extend cartridges that you purchase with your own projects. Oracle Communications supports a library of extensible cartridges that are fully compatible with Design Studio and provide a basis from which to assemble solutions.
project dependency
A state in which entities in one project reference entities in another project, creating a dependent relationship between the projects. For example, an application project might reference data elements defined in a common model project.
provider function
A standard set of unique capabilities, defined by the input the provider function accepts (an order or standard request), the output it generates (an order or standard request), the data that guides the provider function behavior, and a description the provider function purpose. Examples of provider functions include Orchestrate Service Order, Calculate Technical Order, and Orchestrate Technical Order.
provisioning
A set of processes that provide the data necessary for enabling a service, with the actual enabling done by activation.
Rapid Service Design
The configuration of the OSS system to reflect evolving business requirements. A service provider's technical community uses application tools and a standard methodology to complete this design, which includes:
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A technical catalog that contains an information model (with PSR entities) and a functional model that contains fulfillment patterns for service order management, technical order management, and design and assign patterns.
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A technical Inventory that includes assignable resources and network targets.
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A service design methodology that uses an information model as an anchor.
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A dynamic provider function pattern that contains anchor entities, request types, fulfillment patterns, and transformation sequences.
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An order to activation provider function blueprint that maps provider functions to service order management, technical order management, service and resource management, and activation applications. The blueprint also contains order contracts and provider functions.
refactor
The process of changing data elements without modifying the external functional behavior of a solution.
Refactoring in Design Studio enables you to propagate data model changes across the entire solution without sacrificing model integrity. You can rename, change the location of, copy, and move data elements. Additionally, refactoring enables you to copy data elements to create similar data entities, and to create modular and reusable data structures.
Report Development Kit (RDK)
A set of tools delivered with Design Studio that facilitate the creation of custom report designs. The RDK includes a library of key BIRT objects required to retrieve data from Design Studio models, reference report designs, a published Design Studio exchange format, and sample XML files that you can use to test report design features.
See Design Studio Developer's Guide for more information about developing your own reports.
resource
A specific object in the network and in the inventory that can be allocated for use by a service.
root data element
A data element found at the root of a schema entity. A root has no parent data element.
service
An entity that represents the way that a product is realized and delivered to a customer. For example, if you sell DSL Gold as a product, it is delivered as a DSL Gold service, enabled by appropriate resources.
service design methodology
A framework, the terminology, and a set of processes that describe the workflow necessary to manage products and services in B/OSS environments.
service domain
A group of services provided by a service provider that includes all of the technical services and resources to support a set of customer facing services. A service domain is also referred to as a service family, a line of service, or a play. Examples of a service domain include mobile, broadband, and IPTV.
service fulfillment
A business process in which a customer order is accepted and a new service is provisioned to meet it.
service order
A type of order processed by OSM, where the subjects of the order line actions are customer facing service instances.
service order management (SOM)
An application role that accepts service orders and orchestrates them among multiple service relationship management (SRM) system instances.
simple data element
Reusable data types that contain no child dependencies. A simple data element has no structure, and is associated (directly or indirectly) to a primitive type (integer, Boolean, string, and so forth).
specification
A blueprint that defines the composition of an entity, including the attributes and relationships between an entity and other objects. There are different types of specifications for different types of entities, such as telephone numbers, networks, customer facing services, and resources. Specifications are defined in Design Studio and deployed into run-time environments, where entities can be created based on them.
solution
In Design Studio, a solution is a model that meets the requirements of use cases that solve a market problem. You use Oracle Communications applications to design solutions that deliver services to customers for multiple service domains.Design Studio documentation generally focuses on solutions for service fulfillment (or Concept-to-Activate, which aligns closely with Product Lifecycle Management, Operations & Fulfillment processes in the TMF Business Process Framework). Solutions can be single-product but typically refer to a suite of products that provide a set of end-to-end use-cases for both manual and automated processes in the design and run time.
solution designer
A person responsible for pulling a collection of cartridges together to deliver a multi-product solution; an activity that may involve the design of additional cartridges to perform the desired solution functions. The solution designer focuses on cross-product interactions, rather than on the details of a single product.
solution tester
A person who validates that a cartridge or solution is functioning correctly. The solution tester deploys cartridge archives, produced by Design Studio, to a test environment to certify that the cartridge or solution is functioning as intended.
structured data element
Reusable data types that include embedded data types and are containers of simple data elements and other structured data elements.
technical catalog
A catalog of services, resources, fulfillment patterns, and other artifact definitions and metadata organized to support service fulfillment, assurance, and other operational support system (OSS) processes.
technical order
A type of order processed by OSM, where the subjects of the order line actions are resource facing service instances or resource instances, or a combination of resource facing service instances or resource instances.
technical order management
An application role that accepts technical orders and orchestrates them among multiple activation, WFM (workforce management), and SCM (supply chain management), and PGW (packet data network gateway) system instances.
Unified Inventory Management (UIM)
Oracle Communications Unified Inventory Management gives service providers a single, comprehensive, accurate view of customer services and maps these services to logical and physical resources, ensuring that trusted, actionable, real-time information is available to any business process for both current and next-generation services and technologies.
view
A presentation of information in the workbench. Views enable you to customize the manner in which information is presented, and provide access to a specific set of functions, available through the view's toolbars and context menus.
For example, the Problem view displays errors that exist in the model entities, so you use the Problem view to locate and resolve entity errors. You use the Data Element view to model and review data in your workspace. The Data Element view and Problem view each provide access to a different set of Design Studio functions.
A view can appear by itself, or it can be stacked with other views. You can change the layout of a perspective by opening and closing views and by docking them in different positions in the workbench window.
workbench
A set of tools you can use to navigate within and manipulate the workspace, access functionality, and edit content and properties of resources.
working set
A configuration that describes a subset of files, classes, folders, and projects. Working sets help you categorize resources across projects into a contextually relevant representation. Working sets facilitate efficient modeling in large, multi-project solutions by enabling you to limit visibility to relevant projects only.
workspace
A representation of your data. Workspaces are directories on your local machine that contain resources, including projects at the top of a tree structure and folders and files underneath. A workspace root directory is created internally when you create a Design Studio workspace. You can create more than one workspace, but you can have only one workspace open at a time.