1. Loading Rated Events
  2. Configuring Rated Event Output from ECE

3 Configuring Rated Event Output from ECE

Learn how to configure Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) Elastic Charging Engine (ECE) for the Rated Event Loader (RE Loader) and Rated Event Formatter (RE Formatter) to process events.

Topics in this chapter:

See also:

Adding an RE Formatter Instance

To add an RE Formatter instance:

  1. Access the ECE configuration MBeans in a JMX editor, such as JConsole. See "Accessing ECE Configuration MBeans".

  2. Expand the ECE Configuration node.

  3. Expand charging.ratedEventFormatters.

  4. Expand Operations.

  5. Select addRatedEventFormatterConfiguration.

  6. Enter a value for the name parameter.

  7. Click addRatedEventFormatterConfiguration.

  8. Use Elastic Charging Controller (ECC) to start the RE Formatter instance.

Configuring RE Formatter

You can use this procedure to configure and tune the RE Formatter. Starting with Patch Set 5, you can also use this procedure to configure which plug-in the RE Formatter will use to process events, either the default plug-in for the original processing method or the ECE Rated Event Manager plug-in. See the pluginType entry in Table 3-1 for information about this configuration. See "Methods of Transferring Rated Events to BRM" for more information about the different processing methods.

To configure RE Formatter, do the following:

  1. Access the ECE configuration MBeans in a JMX editor, such as JConsole. See "Accessing ECE Configuration MBeans".

  2. Expand charging.ratedEventFormatters.instance_name, where instance_name is the name of the instance you want to configure.

  3. Expand Attributes.

  4. Specify values for name, partition, and primaryInstanceName and for any other attributes as described in Table 3-1 .

  5. Use Elastic Charging Controller (ECC) to stop and restart any RE Formatter instances that you configured.

    Each instance reads its configuration information by name.

    For information about stopping and starting RE Formatter instances, see "Starting and Stopping ECE" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.

Table 3-1 describes the parameters you must set to configure a RE Formatter instance.

Table 3-1 RE Formatter Instance Configuration Attributes and Values

Attribute Name Default Value Description
name formatter

The name of a Rated Event Formatter instance. Name Rated Event Formatter instances consistently and uniquely (for example, formatter1, formatter2, and so on).

The value of name must match the name of the Rated Event Formatter node instance in the ECE_home/oceceserver/config/eceTopology.conf file.

partition 1

The partition for the rated events to be processed by a Rated Event Formatter instance. The value of partition must match the target BRM database schema number for the schema to which the ECE rated event is to be exported.

For example, for a BRM multischema environment, BRM schema 0.0.0.1, partition must be set to 1; for BRM schema 0.0.0.2, partition must be set to 2; and so on. See "Configuring ECE for a Multischema BRM Environment" in BRM System Administrator's Guide for more information.

You may want to name your formatter instances to correlate with the partition number. For example, one instance of Rated Event Formatter named formatter1 can process rated events to be exported to the BRM schema 0.0.0.1 (partition value 1), and another instance of Rated Event Formatter named formatter2 can process rated events to be exported to the BRM schema 0.0.0.2 (partition value 2), and so on.

primaryInstanceName ratedEventFormatter1

The name of the primary Rated Event Formatter instance.
connectionName OraclePersistence1

The connection name of the persistence database. This attribute is applicable only if you are using Oracle Database for storing rated events.
dataStoreName kvstore

The data store name to be used to access an Oracle NoSQL system.

This attribute is applicable only if you are using Oracle NoSQL database for storing rated events.
dataStoreConnection localhost:5000

The connection information to the Oracle NoSQL database.

The connection string consists of host name and port number for connecting to an Oracle NoSQL system.

This attribute is applicable only if you are using Oracle NoSQL database for storing rated events.
threadPoolSize 4

The number of threads used by the RE Formatter instance to process a set of rated events for each time range defined by checkPointInterval.

Valid values are greater than zero and up to any number the system resources allow. Tune this value to the expected workload in the deployed environment.
retainDuration 0

The duration in seconds that rated events must be retained in the Oracle NoSQL database after they have been processed before they can be purged.

Set the value to the seconds you want to retain rated events in the Oracle NoSQL database after Rated Event Formatter has published the rated events as RE Loader records (CDR records).

The default is 0, which means that as soon as rated events are processed, they are purged immediately.

This attribute is applicable only if you are using Oracle NoSQL database for storing rated events.
ripeDuration 60

The duration in seconds that rated events have existed before they can be processed.

This setting must be greater than the time it takes for ECE charging servers to fully recover after failure. Delaying the processing of rated events up to the ripeDuration time allows time for resolving any duplicate rated events that may have been persisted to the Oracle NoSQL database.

The ripeDuration value is the minimum number of seconds rated event information must be stored in the Oracle NoSQL Database before the Rated Event Formatter can read it.

checkPointInterval 4

The time range in seconds used by the Rated Event Formatter instance to read a set of rated events at a repeated time interval.

Valid values must be the following:

  • Less than or equal to the value of ripeDuration

  • Evenly divisible by the number of threads configured for threadPoolSize

This is the number of seconds Rated Event Formatter waits before reading a batch of rated event information. If rated event information in a batch has not yet met the value of ripeDuration, the Rated Event Formatter does not read it.

pluginPath

n/a

 The JAR library path that contains the reader plug-in implementation. This value is only needed if the library is not in the class path for ECE.
pluginName n/a This attribute must be set to the value configured in the charging.brmCdrPlugins.name MBean. See "Adding a BRM Plug-in Instance for RE Formatter" for more information.
pluginType oracle.communication.brm.charging.ratedevent.formatterplugin.internal.BrmCdrPluginDirect

If you are using Patch Set 4 or earlier, set this to oracle.communication.brm.charging.ratedevent.formatterplugin.internal.BrmCdrPluginDirect.

If you are using Patch Set 5 or later, set this to oracle.communication.brm.charging.ratedevent.formatterplugin.internal.BrmCdrPluginDirect if you are using the original RE Formatter plug-in, or set it to com.oracle.brm.ref_brm_plugin.RatedEventManagerCdrPlugin to use the new Rated Event Manager functionality.

logFormatterWorker false Enables or disables logging for the worker thread pool.
maxPersistenceCatchupTime 0 The maximum number of seconds that Rated Event Formatter waits after a database outage to resume processing events.
siteName n/a

The name of the site that the Rated Event Formatter instance formats events for.

In an active-active deployment where data persistence is enabled, siteName for a primary Rated Event Formatter instance matches the site where the instance runs. For secondary Rated Event Formatter instances, siteName is different from the site where the instance runs, and specifies the site that the instance is a backup for.

This allows the secondary instance to process the rated events from a remote site when the remote site is unavailable.

See "About Rated Event Formatter in a Persistence-Enabled Active-Active System" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.

Changing the Event Transfer Mode in Runtime

This procedure only applies for Patch Set 5 or later.

You can use this procedure to change the rated event transfer mode without restarting the RE Formatter. You must be using the ECE Rated Event Manager plug-in for RE Formatter event processing for this procedure to work. See the pluginType entry in Table 3-1 for information about this configuration. See "Methods of Transferring Rated Events to BRM" for more information about the different processing methods.

Note:

Using this method to change the processing mode will not update the REM.properties file, and the change will not persist if the RE Formatter is restarted. You must update the REM.properties file ref.mode parameter separately if you want the change to persist. See General ECE RE Manager Plug-in Configuration for more information about configuring this value.

To configure RE Formatter to use a different processing mode on a running REF server, do the following:

  1. Connect to the REF node enabled for JMX management.

    You do this by connecting to the JMX port set for the REF node in the ECE_home/oceceserver/config/eceTopology.conf file, where ECE_home is the directory in which ECE is installed.

  2. Start a JMX editor that enables you to edit MBean attributes, such as JConsole.

  3. In the editor's MBean hierarchy, find the REFBRMPlugin MBeans.

  4. Expand REFBRMPlugin.Configuration.

  5. Expand Attributes.

  6. Specify one of the following values for operationModeString:

    • DIRECT
    • ZIP_DB
    • ZIP_FILE
    • CDR

    The processing mode will be changed.

Adding a BRM Plug-in Instance for RE Formatter

To add a BRM Plug-in instance for RE Formatter:

  1. Access the ECE configuration MBeans in a JMX editor, such as JConsole. See "Accessing ECE Configuration MBeans".

  2. Expand the ECE Configuration node.

  3. Expand charging.brmCdrPlugins.

  4. Expand Operations.

  5. Select addBrmCdrPluginConfiguration.

  6. Add configuration parameters, including a name that matches what is configured in the pluginName parameter in the appropriate charging.ratedEventFormatters.instance_name MBean. See "Configuring RE Formatter" for more information.

  7. Click addBrmCdrPluginConfiguration.

  8. Use Elastic Charging Controller (ECC) to start the instance of Rated Event Formatter that the BRM CDR plug-in is associated with. This is defined in the Rated Event Formatter MBean (charging.ratedEventFormatters) pluginName attribute.

Configuring RE Formatter Output

To configure RE Formatter output, you configure the plug-in run by RE Formatter:

  1. Access the ECE configuration MBeans in a JMX editor, such as JConsole. See "Accessing ECE Configuration MBeans".

  2. Expand the ECE Configuration node.

  3. Expand charging.brmCdrPlugins.instance_name.

  4. Expand Attributes.

  5. Specify values for the following attributes as needed:

    Attribute Name Default Description

    tempDirectoryPath

    /tmp/tmp

    The directory path for the BRM CDR Plug-in to store temporary files while processing the rated events.

    doneDirectoryPath

    /home/charging/rel_input/

    The directory path for the BRM CDR Plug-in to store completed CDR files from processing the rated events.

    The values for doneDirectoryPath, headerFileDirectoryPath, and dataFileDirectoryPath must be the same for an instance.

    doneFileExtension

    .done

    The file extension for the completed CDR files created by the BRM CDR Plug-in.

    headerFileDirectoryPath

    /home/charging/rel_input/

    The directory path for the BRM CDR Plug-in to store the files that define the format of the CDRs.

    The values for doneDirectoryPath, headerFileDirectoryPath, and dataFileDirectoryPath must be the same for an instance.

    headerFileExtension

    .hdr

    The file extension for the CDR header files from the BRM CDR Plug-in.

    dataDirectoryPath

    /home/charging/rel_input/

    The directory path for the BRM CDR Plug-in to store the rated CDR files for processing.

    The values for doneDirectoryPath, headerFileDirectoryPath, and dataFileDirectoryPath must be the same for an instance.

    dataFileExtension

    .data

    The file extension for the rated CDR files for processing by the BRM CDR Plug-in.

    enableInvalidRatedEvents

    false

    Specifies whether RE Formatter moves invalid events to invalidRatedEventDirectoryPath.

    Note: Rated events can be invalidated for a variety of reasons, such as a missing balance impact. You can drop or reprocess invalid events from NoSQL by restarting RE Formatter.

    invalidRatedEventDirectoryPath

    /tmp/dc2/secondary/invalid

    RE Formatter moves invalid events to this directory if enableInvalidRatedEvents is set to true.

  6. Stop and start the RE Formatter instance associated with the BRM Plug-in instance.

Troubleshooting Rated Event Formatter Processing

If you suspect a problem with how Rated Event Formatter processes rated events, look in the ECE_home/oceceserver/logs/rated-event-formatter.log file for errors. The log file contains information about how many rated events are processed, how many are purged, and any errors during rated-event processing.

Accessing ECE Configuration MBeans

For all configurations, start by accessing the ECE configuration MBeans:

  1. Log on to the driver machine.
  2. Start the ECE charging servers (if they are not started).
  3. Connect to the ECE charging server node enabled for JMX management.

    This is the charging server node set to start CohMgt = true in the ECE_home/oceceserver/config/eceTopology.conf file, where ECE_home is the directory in which ECE is installed.

  4. Start a JMX editor that enables you to edit MBean attributes, such as JConsole.
  5. In the editor's MBean hierarchy, find the ECE configuration MBeans.