Statement Generation Process
Oracle Revenue Management and Billing enables you to generate statements for a person through the web service and batch control. The following figure graphically represents how the system extracts the details from the bills and generates a statement:
The following figure indicates the different components involved in the statement generation process:
The major components involved in the statement generation process are:
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Triggers - The two main invocation contexts for the statement generation process are RMB Batch Jobs and Online Web Services. Typically, the batch jobs trigger fetching of records (data) for all accounts since the previous trigger, whereas the online service triggers fetching of data for one applicable account.
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Extractor - The main function of Extractor is to fetch data from the RMB database tables using the statement views and convert them into generic objects called value objects.
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Formatter - The Formatter converts the value objects into the desired format using the predefined templates.
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Output Writer - The Output Writer routes the formatted data to the database tables.
The statement generation process receives its triggers through RMB Batch Jobs or Online Web Services. An external scheduler typically invokes the batch job at a desired frequency and extracts bill data for all those statement constructs whose statement cycle's processing date (which is earlier than the batch business date) is in the Pending status. On the other hand, the online web service typically triggers extract of an account's bill details and there will be appropriate authentication mechanism for triggering the web service. Once the statement generation process receives a trigger, either from a batch job or from an online service, the Extractor fetches the accounts' bill details from the database through the statement views. The Extractor then converts the data into generic objects called value objects, and passes them onto the Formatter.
The Formatter first identifies the format applicable for the account and fetches the corresponding template from the statement metadata table. The Formatter then merges the value objects and the fetched template to generate a text output, which is then passed on to the Output Writer. Based on the metadata configurations, the Output Writer writes the output to the database tables.