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• Funnel Visualisation not showing drop out in steps

  - by cjk

  I have a site where users will follow this path (hopefully): mysite.com/entity mysite.com/entity/pay mysite.com/entity/pay/details mysite.com/entity/pay/confirmation mysite.com/entity/pay/payment mysite.com/entity/paymentsuccessful?lotsofuniquestuff The entity section could be any one of a multitude of entries, but once the user is on a journey it will stay consistent. I have a goal set up for this as a regular expression, with the match being .*PaymentSuccessful.*. This detects goal successes perfectly (as checked with data stored by the site directly). I have set the following steps within the goal: /[a-zA-Z0-9]+/pay /[a-zA-Z0-9]+/pay/details /[a-zA-Z0-9]+/pay/confirmation /[a-zA-Z0-9]+/pay/payment My funnel detects entry into the funnel (e.g. 47 users) of which say 10 complete the funnel. However, all drop offs are after the first step, even though the exist page is listed as the second step! My data also suggests users are getting further in the funnel before failing to reach the goal. What have I done wrong?

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• Magento Subscription Form with Image upload

  - by Pankaj Upadhyay

  We have a peculiar requirement and our site is in magento. Requirement We want the user to fill in a personal information form with their image. After that, the user should be redirected to a product subscription page where he can select either 3 month, 6 month or on yearly basis. Now, when the selection is made, the user should make the payment via our payment method. How can I develop this? I am not able to figure it out. Should I go about editing the registration page or what? Let me know how you will deal with such a requirement?

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• TripleDES in Perl/PHP/ColdFusion

  - by Seidr

  Recently a problem arose regarding hooking up an API with a payment processor who were requesting a string to be encrypted to be used as a token, using the TripleDES standard. Our Applications run using ColdFusion, which has an Encrypt tag - that supports TripleDES - however the result we were getting back was not what the payment processor expected. First of all, here is the resulting token the payment processor were expecting. AYOF+kRtg239Mnyc8QIarw== And below is the snippet of ColdFusion we were using, and the resulting string. <!--- Coldfusion Crypt (here be monsters) ---> <cfset theKey="123412341234123412341234"> <cfset theString = "username=test123"> <cfset strEncodedEnc = Encrypt(theString, theKey, "DESEDE", "Base64")> <!--- resulting string(strEncodedEnc): tc/Jb7E9w+HpU2Yvn5dA7ILGmyNTQM0h ---> As you can see, this was not returning the string we were hoping for. Seeking a solution, we ditched ColdFusion for this process and attempted to reproduce the token in PHP. Now I'm aware that various languages implement encryption in different ways - for example in the past managing encryption between a C# application and PHP back-end, I've had to play about with padding in order to get the two to talk, but my experience has been that PHP generally behaves when it comes to encryption standards. Anyway, on to the PHP source we tried, and the resulting string. /* PHP Circus (here be Elephants) */ $theKey="123412341234123412341234"; $theString="username=test123"; $strEncodedEnc=base64_encode(mcrypt_ecb (MCRYPT_3DES, $theKey, $theString, MCRYPT_ENCRYPT)); /* resulting string(strEncodedEnc): sfiSu4mVggia8Ysw98x0uw== */ As you can plainly see, we've got another string that differs from both the string expected by the payment processor AND the one produced by ColdFusion. Cue head-against-wall integration techniques. After many to-and-fro communications with the payment processor (lots and lots of reps stating 'we can't help with coding issues, you must be doing it incorrectly, read the manual') we were finally escalated to someone with more than a couple of brain-cells to rub together, who was able to step back and actually look at and diagnose the issue. He agreed, our CF and PHP attempts were not resulting in the correct string. After a quick search, he also agreed that it was not neccesarily our source, but rather how the two languages implemented their vision of the TripleDES standard. Coming into the office this morning, we were met by an email with a snippet of source code, in Perl. This is was the code they were directly using on their end to produce the expected token. #!/usr/bin/perl # Perl Crypt Calamity (here be...something) use strict; use CGI; use MIME::Base64; use Crypt::TripleDES; my $cgi = CGI->new(); my $param = $cgi->Vars(); $param->{key} = "123412341234123412341234"; $param->{string} = "username=test123"; my $des = Crypt::TripleDES->new(); my $enc = $des->encrypt3($param->{string}, $param->{key}); $enc = encode_base64($enc); $enc =~ s/\n//gs; # resulting string (enc): AYOF+kRtg239Mnyc8QIarw== So, there we have it. Three languages, three implementations of what they quote in the documentation as TripleDES Standard Encryption, and three totally different resulting strings. My question is, from your experience of these three languages and their implementations of the TripleDES algorithm, have you been able to get any two of them to give the same response, and if so what tweaks to the code did you have to make in order to come to the result? I understand this is a very drawn out question, but I wanted to give clear and precise setting for each stage of testing that we had to perform. I'll also be performing some more investigatory work on this subject later, and will post any findings that I come up with to this question, so that others may avoid this headache.

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• Jquery and live act wired but act ok after force refresh in IE

  - by Y.G.J

  hi guys - somthing is wrong with my code and i can't get what it is... i have a div id = "personaltab" i have a form in side it to login the user with username and password. if success the jquery empty the div and puts in the form of the bidding. if the user try to bid the other ajax that assign to the button is working but for some reason skips the empty and just adding the responded ajax to the div i have checked that in IE and chrome and it is working fine in chrome here are my codes $("#login").click(function() { var id = $("input#pid").val(); var user = $("input#puser").val(); var pass = $("input#ppass").val(); var dataString = 'id='+ id + '&user='+ user + '&pass=' + pass; if (user == "") { alert("error"); $("input#puser").focus(); return false; } if (pass == "") { alert("error"); $("input#ppass").focus(); return false; } $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "loginpersonal.asp", data: dataString, success: function(msg) { if (msg=="False") { alert("error"); $("#personaltab").show(); } else { $("#personaltab").fadeOut("normal",function(){ $("#personaltab").empty(); $("#personaltab").append(msg); $("#personaltab").slideDown(); }); } }, error: function (XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) { alert('error'); } }); return false; }); $("#sendbid").live("click", function(){ var startat = $("input[name=startat]").val(); var sprice = $("input[name=sprice]").val(); if (parseInt(sprice)<=parseInt(startat)) { alert("error"); $("input[name=sprice]").focus(); return false; } else { var payment = $("select[name=payment]").val(); if ($('input[name=credit]').is(':checked') ){ var credit = true; } var prodid = $("input[name=id]").val(); var dataString = 'id='+ prodid + '&price='+ sprice + '&payment=' + payment + '&credit=' + credit; $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "loginpersonal.asp", data: dataString, success: function(msg) { $("#personaltab").empty(); $("#personaltab").append(msg); $("#personaltab").show(); }, error: function (XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) { alert('error'); } }); } return false; });

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• how to access generated groupname for asp radiobutton

  - by rap-uvic

  Hi, I need to access radiobutton groupname in my jquery. However, groupname that's rendered for an asp radiobutton is kind of different. Example: <asp:RadioButton runat="server" GroupName="payment" ID="creditcard" Checked="true" value="creditcard" /> will generate: <input type="radio" checked="checked" value="creditcard" name="ctl00$ContentPlaceHolder1$payment" id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_creditcard"> I can't work with <%=creditcard.GroupName% in jquery. Is there a way I can get the generated groupname or name for it?

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• Oscommerce PayPal IPN still Status pending

  - by ron

  I'm working with oscommerce and i have problem with Paypal ipn When someone makes a payment, even though the money is coming through OK, on the backend of the website it is saying it is unverified something like that : PayPal IPN Verified [Completed (Unverified; $99.90). I get the email "Notification of payment received" so why is it still pending? any idea? Thanks in advance

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• Guidance related to Paypal Integration Using Codeigniter

  - by anum

  I need some guidance related to Paypal Integration. Its not similar to regular cart. After checkout, the site offers a form for payment option, either its paypal or some other payment process. The form directs to controller after submit. A array exists which contains all items value, from here on how can I proceed to paypal site. How can I do this?

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• Paypal IPN call back with parameter

  - by proyb2

  I want to automate a process after user have made a payment. 1) User enter details on forms and submit, the session will pass unique ID to paypal 2) After user complete the paypal payment, unique ID is then pass back to my server for the script to read and register into db. How do I do that?

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• trouble to connect with AppStore in my InAppPurchase application(iPhone)

  - by riteshkumar1905

  There is problem to connect AppStore in my application. All things run fine in Simulator.But When i go with iPhone then AppStore is not connected.. I am also enclose the code which i call on button....... import "BuyController.h" import "InAppPurchaseManager.h" import "SKProducts.h" define kInAppPurchaseProUpgradeProductId @"com.vigyaapan.iWorkOut1" @implementation BuyController (IBAction)buy:(id)sender { /* get the product description (defined in early sections)*/ //[self requestProUpgradeProductData]; { if ([SKPaymentQueue canMakePayments]) { InAppPurchaseManager *Observer = [[InAppPurchaseManager alloc] init]; [[SKPaymentQueue defaultQueue] addTransactionObserver:Observer]; //NSURL *sandboxStoreURL = [[NSURL alloc]initWithString:@"http://sandbox.itunes.apple.com/verifyReceipt"]; //[[UIApplication sharedApplication]openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://sandbox.itunes.apple.com"]]; [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/ com.vigyaapan.iWorkOut1?id=9820091347&;amp;amp;amp;amp;mt=8"]]; //[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=301349397&;amp;amp;amp;amp;mt=8"]]; SKPayment *payment = [SKPayment paymentWithProductIdentifier:@"com.vigyaapan.iWorkOut1"]; [[SKPaymentQueue defaultQueue] addPayment:payment]; } else { UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"MyApp" message:@"You are not authorized to purchase from AppStore" delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles: nil]; [alert show]; [alert release]; } //return [SKPaymentQueue canMakePayments]; } SKPayment *payment = [SKPayment paymentWithProductIdentifier:kInAppPurchaseProUpgradeProductId]; [[SKPaymentQueue defaultQueue] addPayment:payment]; //[self requestProUpgradeProductData]; /* get the product description (defined in early sections)*/ } /* // The designated initializer. Override if you create the controller programmatically and want to perform customization that is not appropriate for viewDidLoad. - (id)initWithNibName:(NSString *)nibNameOrNil bundle:(NSBundle )nibBundleOrNil { if (self = [super initWithNibName:nibNameOrNil bundle:nibBundleOrNil]) { // Custom initialization } return self; }/ // Implement viewDidLoad to do additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib. - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; } // Override to allow orientations other than the default portrait orientation. - (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation { // Return YES for supported orientations return (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait); } (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning { // Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview. [super didReceiveMemoryWarning]; // Release any cached data, images, etc that aren't in use. } (void)viewDidUnload { // Release any retained subviews of the main view. // e.g. self.myOutlet = nil; } (void)dealloc { [super dealloc]; } @end

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• CSV File Content Display Issue

  - by Pankaj Khurana

  Hi, I want to retrieve contents from a csv file for that i am using following code: <?php $fo = fopen("record.csv", "rb+"); while(!feof($fo)) { $contents[] = fgetcsv($fo,0,';'); } print_r($contents); fclose($fo); ?> But my records are displayed in the following format: ????††???????†††??†††††????"Search Transactions Results" ††††??†???????††††?††††††??? ???????????? ?????????????? ?????????? My csv file format: "Search Transactions Results" "Transaction ID","Reference Transaction ID","Date","Type","Subject","Item Number","Item Name","Invoice ID","Name","Email","Shipping Name","Shipping Address Line 1","Shipping Address Line 2","Shipping Address City","Shipping State/Province","Shipping Zip/Postal Code","Shipping Address Country","Shipping Method","Address Status","Contact Phone Number","Gross Amount","Receipt ID","Custom Field","Option 1 Name","Option 1 Value","Option 2 Name","Option 2 Value","Note","Auction Site","Auction User ID","Item URL","Auction Closing Date","Insurance Amount","Currency","Fees","Net Amount","Shipping & Handling Amount","Sales Tax Amount","To Email","Time","Time Zone" "1T","",5/5/2010 2:10:44 PM,"Payment Processed","CFP Self Study Kit","1","CFP Self Study Kit","","User1","[email protected]","","","","","","","","","N","","68.18","R1","","","","","","","","","",,"","USD","-2.62","65.56","0","0","[email protected]","01:40","Asia/Calcutta" "2T","",5/19/2010 4:04:08 PM,"Payment Processed","CFP Self Study Kit","1","CFP Self Study Kit","","User2","[email protected]","","","","","","","","","N","","68.18","R2","","","","","","","","","",,"","USD","-2.62","65.56","0","0","[email protected]","03:34","Asia/Calcutta" "3T","1RT",5/19/2010 5:28:45 PM,"Currency Conversion Completed","","","",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","17492.6","","","","","","","","","","",,"","INR","0","17492.6","0","0","","04:58","Asia/Calcutta" "4T","2RT",5/19/2010 5:28:45 PM,"Currency Conversion Completed","","","",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","-393.36","","","","","","","","","","",,"","USD","0","-393.36","0","0","","04:58","Asia/Calcutta" "5T","",5/19/2010 5:28:45 PM,"Transfer to Bank Initiated","P1006","","P1006",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","-17492.6","","","","","","","","","","",,"","INR","0","-17492.6","0","0","","04:58","Asia/Calcutta" "6T","",5/20/2010 5:38:02 PM,"Transfer to Bank Completed","P1006","","P1006",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","-17492.6","","","","","","","","","","",,"","INR","0","-17492.6","0","0","","05:08","Asia/Calcutta" "7T","",5/21/2010 12:32:37 PM,"Payment Processed","FP - LVC Plus","","FP - LVC Plus","","User3","[email protected]","User3","NEW DELHI","BEHIND KARNATAKA BANK LD","SOUTH","NEW DELHI","110023","IN","","N","","283.96","","","","","","","","","","",,"","USD","-9.95","274.01","0","0","[email protected]","00:02","Asia/Calcutta" "8T","",5/25/2010 4:40:48 PM,"Transfer to Bank Initiated","P1006","","P1006",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","-12569.85","","","","","","","","","","",,"","INR","0","-12569.85","0","0","","04:10","Asia/Calcutta" "9T","3RT",5/25/2010 4:40:48 PM,"Currency Conversion Completed","","","",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","-274.01","","","","","","","","","","",,"","USD","0","-274.01","0","0","","04:10","Asia/Calcutta" "10T","4RT",5/25/2010 4:40:48 PM,"Currency Conversion Completed","","","",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","12569.85","","","","","","","","","","",,"","INR","0","12569.85","0","0","","04:10","Asia/Calcutta" "11T","",5/26/2010 4:57:39 PM,"Transfer to Bank Completed","P1006","","P1006",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","-12569.85","","","","","","","","","","",,"","INR","0","-12569.85","0","0","","04:27","Asia/Calcutta" "Total","-247.05 USD","-15.19","-262.24" "Total","0.00 INR","0.00","0.00" I want to retrieve the records where "Type"="Payment Processed". I want to retrieve content in a key value format that is for e.g. Transaction ID-1T as i have to store this values in a database but display is not proper. I am unable to find out the reason for the same please help me on this. Thanks

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• Paypal Mass pay fails when large transactions are made

  - by Sid

  I am using the paypal mass pay feature but i am unable to make payments greater than $20. When I attempt to make large transactions (say for $120) i get the error that says the account has insufficient funds. My account has more than the requisite amount to make the payment. I am trying to find a solution as there is no documentation that says anything about an a limit for each payment in the mass pay api. I would appreciate any help on this.

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• Drawbacks of using an integer as a bitfield?

  - by Mark

  I have a bunch of boolean options for things like "accepted payment types" which can include things like cash, credit card, cheque, paypal, etc. Rather than having a half dozen booleans in my DB, I can just use an integer and assign each payment method an integer, like so PAYMENT_METHODS = ( (1<<0, 'Cash'), (1<<1, 'Credit Card'), (1<<2, 'Cheque'), (1<<3, 'Other'), ) and then query the specific bit in python to retrieve the flag. I know this means the database can't index by specific flags, but are there any other drawbacks?

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• Money Transaction without using in-app purchase for iphone app

  - by Jaydevsinh Gohil

  I want to implement the payment gateway like functionality in my iphone application other than In-App Purchase feature provided by Apple. So, i have one Question regarding the application approval on Appstore that, if i will redirect user to the UIwebview for payment related functionality, then apple will reject this application for not following the human interface guideline or it will allow this. Other way i can do it by calling web-service for the transaction of money. So, again there is any chance of app rejection on AppStore. Please share your thought on this

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• Shopping cart in php and how to integrat PayPal in it?

  - by Param-Ganak

  Hello Friends! I want to develop a shopping cart in php. I also want to integreate online payment facility using paypal. Which allows payment thrugh credit card and decbit card. So Please tell me how to integreate paypal in my own shopping cart to achive secure transaction? Thank You!

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• Need help with tweaking a Dropdown with three options, user selects one - a hidden div appears with correct fields

  - by Jack

  Hello Again, I posted a question on here and got an answer within minutes I'm hoping the wizards on here can help me again. Okay so I'm using a script I found online to try and add this function to a shopping cart form. Here's the setup. I have a payment method dropdown with Visa, Mastercard and Bank Withdrawal as the options. For the credit cards I have one hidden div with a certain set of fields, and for the bank I have another hidden div. Each of the divs have named ID's - #payCredit and #payBank The css for both have margin: 0px and display: none; Here's a peice of javascript I used successfuly on a shipping address checkbox `function toggleLayer( whichLayer ) { var elem, vis; if( document.getElementById ) // this is the way the standards work elem = document.getElementById( whichLayer ); else if( document.all ) // this is the way old msie versions work elem = document.all[whichLayer]; else if( document.layers ) // this is the way nn4 works elem = document.layers[whichLayer]; vis = elem.style; // if the style.display value is blank we try to figure it out here if(vis.display==''&&elem.offsetWidth!=undefined&&elem.offsetHeight!=undefined) vis.display = (elem.offsetWidth!=0&&elem.offsetHeight!=0)?'block':'none'; vis.display = (vis.display==''||vis.display=='block')?'none':'block'; }` I was hoping I could change it slightly to meet my needs. Here's the dropdown <label>Payment Method:</label> <select name="payment" id="payment" class="dropdown3" style="width:8em"> <option selected="selected">Select</option> <option value="Visa" onclick="javascript:toggleLayer('payCredit');">Visa</option> <option value="MasterCard" onclick="javascript:toggleLayer('payCredit');">Mastercard</option> <option value="Direct" onclick="javascript:toggleLayer('payBank');">Direct Withdraw</option> </select></li> The current result is that it kinda works. I can open the dropdown and select Visa and it appears, if I select Visa again it disappears, if I select Visa and then select bank, both appear. You can see what i'm working on here - http://test.sharevetcare.com/bestfriends/cart3.html

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, February 19, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, February 19, 2010New ProjectsApplication Management Library: Application Management makes your application life easier. It will automatic do memory management, handle and log unhandled exceptions, profiling y...Audio Service - Play Wave Files From Windows Service: This is a windows service that Check a registry key, when the key is updated with a new wave file path the service plays the wave file.Aviamodels: 3d drawing AviamodelsControl of payment proofs program for Greek citizens: This is a program that is used for Greek citizens who want to keep track of their payment proofs.Cover Creator: Cover Creator gives you the possibility to create and print CD covers. Content of CD is taken from http://www.freedb.org/ or can be added/modyfied ...DevBoard: DevBoard is a webbased scrum tool that helps developers/team get a clear overview of the project progress. It's developed in C# and silverlight.Flex AdventureWorks: The is mostly a skunk-works application to help me get acclimated to CodePlex. The long term goal is to integrate a Flex UI with the AdventureWor...GRE Wordlist: An intuitive and customizable word list for GRE aspirants. Developed in Java using a word list similar to Barron's.Indexer: A desktop file Index and Search tool which allows you to choose a list of folders to index, and then search on later. It is based on Lucene.net an...Project Management Office (PMO) for SharePoint: Sample web part for the Code Mastery event in Boston, February 11, 2010.Restart SQL Audit Policy and Job: Resolve SQL 2008 Audit Network Connectivity Issue.Rounded Corners / DIV Container: The RoundedDiv round corners container is a skin-able, CSS compliant UI control. Select which corners should be rounded, collapse and expand the c...Silverlight Google Search Application: The Silverlight Google Search Application uses Google Search API and behaves like Internet Search Application with option to preview desired page i...Weather Forecast Control: MyWeather forecast control pulls up to date weather forecast information from The Weather Channel for your website.New ReleasesApplication Management Library: ApplicationManagement v1.0: First ReleaseAudio Service - Play Wave Files From Windows Service: Audio Service v1.0: This is a working version of the Audio Service. Please use as you need to.AutoMapper: 1.0.1 for Silverlight 3.0 Alpha: AutoMapper for Silverlight 3.0. Features not supported: IDataReader mapping IListSource mapping All other features are supported.Buzz Dot Net: Buzz Dot Net v.1.10219: Buzz Dot Net Library (Parser & Objects) + WPF Example (using MVVM & Threading)Canvas VSDOC Intellisense: V 1.0.0.0a: This release contains two JavaScript files: canvas-utils.js (can be referenced in both runtime and development environment) canvas-vsdoc.js (must ...Control of payment proofs program for Greek citizens: Payment Proofs: source codeCourier: Beta 2: Added Rx Framework support and re-factored how message registration and un-registration works Blog post explaining the updates and re-factoring c...Cover Creator: Initial release: This is initial stable release. For now only in Polish language.Employee Scheduler: Employee Scheduler 2.2: Small Bug found. Small total hour calculation bug. See http://employeescheduler.codeplex.com/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=6059 Extract the files...EnhSim: Release v1.9.7.1: Release v1.9.7.1Implemented Dislodged Foreign Object trinket Whispering Fanged Skull now also procs off Flame shock dots You can toggle bloodlust o...Extend SmallBasic: Teaching Extensions v.007: added SimpleSquareTest added Tortoise.Approve() for virtual proctor how to use virtual proctor: change the path in the proctor.txt file (located i...FolderSize: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.1.0: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.1.0 A simple utility intended to be used to scan harddrives for the folders that take most place and display this to the user...GLB Virtual Player Builder: v0.4.0 Beta: Allows for user to import and use archetypes for building players. The archetypes are contained in the file "archetypes.xml". This file is editab...Google Map WebPart from SharePoint List: GMap Stable Release: GMap Stable ReleaseHenge3D Physics Library for XNA: Henge3D Source (2010-02 R2): Fixed a build error related to an assembly attribute in XBOX 360 builds. Tweaked the controls in the sample when targeting the 360. Reduced the...Indexer: Beta Release 1: Just the initial/rough cut.NukeCS: NukeCS 5.2.3 Source Code: update version to 5.2.3ODOS: ODOS STABLE 1.5.0: Thank you for your patience while we develop this version. Not that much has been added, though. Just doing some sub-conscious stuff to make life...PoshBoard: PoshBoard 3.0 Beta 1: Welcome to the first beta release of PoshBoard 3.0 ! IMPORTANT WARNING : this release is absolutly not feature complete and is error-prone. Okay, ...Restart SQL Audit Policy and Job: Restart SQL 2008 Audit Policy and Job: This folder contains three pieces of source code: Server Audit Status (Started).xml - Import this on-schedule policy into your server's Policy-Ba...SAL- Self Artificial Learning: Artificial Learning 2AQV Working Proof Of Concept: This is the Simulation proof of concept version that comes after the 1aq version. AQ stands for Anwering Questions.SharePoint 2010 Word Automation: SP 2010 Word Automation - Workflow Actions 1.1: This release includes two new custom workflow activities for SharePoint designer Convert Folder Convert Library More information about these new...SharePoint Outlook Connector: Version 1.0.1.1: Exception Logging has been improved.Sharpy: Sharpy 1.2 Alpha: This is the third Sharpy release. A change has been made to allow overriding the master page from the controller. The release contains the single ...Silverlight Google Search Application: SL Google Search App Alpha: This is just a first alpha version of the application, as it looks like when I uploaded it to CodePlex. The application works, requires Silverlight...Starter Kit Mytrip.Mvc.Entity: Mytrip.Mvc.Entity 1.0 RC: EF Membership UserManager FileManager Localization Captcha ClientValidation Theme CrossBrowser VS 2010 RC MVC 2 RC db MSSQL2008thinktecture WSCF.blue: WSCF.blue V1 Update (1.0.6): This release is an update for WSCF.blue V1. Below are the bug fixes made since the V1.0.5 release: The data contract type filter was not including...TS3QueryLib.Net: TS3QueryLib.Net Version 0.18.13.0: Changelog Added overloads to all methods of QueryRunenr class handling permission tasks to allow passing of permission name instead of permissionid...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.1 Beta 2: This is the second beta of Umbraco 4.1. Umbraco 4.1 is more advanced than ever, yet faster, lighter and simpler to use than ever. We, on behalf of...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30218.0: Automatic drop of latest buildZack's Fiasco - Code Generated DAL: v1.2.4: Enhancements: SQL Server CRUD Stored Procedures added option for USE <db> added option to create or not create INSERT sprocs added option to cr...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Image Resizer Powertoy Clone for WindowsASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesDotNetNuke® Community EditionMost Active ProjectsRawrSharpyDinnerNow.netBlogEngine.NETjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelFacebook Developer ToolkitFluent Ribbon Control Suite

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• Isis Finally Rolls Out

  - by David Dorf

  Google has rolled their wallet out for several chains; I see the NFC readers in Walgreen's when I'm sent their for milk.  But Isis has been relatively quiet until now.  As of last week they have finally launched in their two test cities: Austin, and Salt Lake City.  Below are the supported carriers and phones as of now, but more phones will be added later. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} AT&T supports: HTC One™ X, LG Escape™, Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate™, Samsung Galaxy S® III, Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro™ T-Mobile supports: Samsung Galaxy S® II, Samsung Galaxy S® III, Samsung Galaxy S® Relay 4G Verizon supports: Droid Incredible 4G LTE. Of course iPhone owners have no wallet since Apple didn't included an NFC chip. To start using Isis, you have to take your NFC-capable phone to your carrier's store to get the SIM replaced with a more sophisticated one that has a secure element configured for Isis.  The "secure element" is the cryptographic logic that secures mobile payments.  Carriers like the secure element in the SIM while non-carriers (like Google) prefer the secure element in the phone's electronics. (I'm not entirely sure if you could support both Isis and Google Wallet on the same phone.  Anybody know?) Then you can download the Isis app from Google Play and load your cards.  Most credit cards are supported, and there's a process to verify the credit cards are valid.  Then you can select from the list of participating retailers to "follow."  Selecting a retailer allows that retailer to give you offers via the app. The app is well done and easy to use.  You can select a default payment type and also switch between them easily.  When the phone is tapped on the reader, there are two exchanges of information.  The payment information is transferred, and then the Isis "SmartTap" information which includes optional loyalty number and digital coupons.  Of course the value of mobile wallets comes from the ease of handling all three data types (i.e. payment, loyalty, offers). There are several advertisements for Isis running now, and my favorite is below.

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• Subscription Based Billing

  - by regex

  Hello All, I'm putting together a small start up company which will be set up with a subscription based billing model. The bill will go to customers on either a monthly or quarterly basis depending on the end user's preference. My question is two parted: I'm new to online billing and I'm only really aware of Pay Pal when it comes to third party bill payment, but this seems more like a check out system. I'm sure there are better alternatives than PayPal for third party billing processors (I have tried Googling for them, but I'm having trouble finding exactly what I'm looking for). What options (companies) are available for third party payment processing and what types of experiences (good or bad) have you had with them? We would like to give our customers the ability to set up recurring payments. I'd rather not store a customer's credit card number on our database as I imagine there are a plethora of compliance guidelines around this. Is there a third party solution for recurring payment processing? On a side note, this is not necessarily a code related question and is more business focused. I wasn't sure if there was a better route for posting this question, and please commont or modify this if there is another route I should take. Thanks!!

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• Secure web module for paid subscribtion

  - by DarkJaff

  Hello everyone, I'm building a website (a community web site like digg) but we will soon release a new feature that people will need to pay for. Right now, our website is in pure C# in .NET, very simple pages with some AJAX. When the member log in, there is no HTTPS. Everything is check with session and the internal validation that I do. What we need, is that when the people are logged in, they can click on a link a proceed to a payment (Paypal, credit card, etc). After the payment is done, the "billing module" will return a value to my site to validate that the payment is done so the account will be flagged as "paying member". I'm guessing this is the way to do, maybe I'm wrong! So my questions are: -What is the name of this kind of billing module? (I will do some research on that) -Do you know any ready to go module that does this kind of thing? -(I push my luck) Do you know any FREE module that do this kind of things. If something is not clear, don't hesitate to ask question :) Thanks a lot! DarkJaff

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• How can I map to a field that is joined in via one of three possible tables

  - by Mongus Pong

  I have this object : public class Ledger { public virtual Person Client { get; set; } // .... } The Ledger table joins to the Person table via one of three possible tables : Bill, Receipt or Payment. So we have the following tables : Ledger LedgerID PK Bill BillID PK, LedgerID, ClientID Receipt ReceiptID PK, LedgerID, ClientID Payment PaymentID PK, LedgerID, ClientID If it was just the one table, I could map this as : Join ( "Bill", x => { x.ManyToOne ( ledger => ledger.Client, mapping => mapping.Column ( "ClientID" ) ); x.Key ( l => l.Column ( "LedgerID" ) ); } ); This won't work for three tables. For a start the Join performs an inner join. Since there will only ever be one of Bill, Receipt or Payment - an inner join on these tables will always return zero rows. Then it would need to know to do a Coalesce on the ClientID of each of these tables to know the ClientID to grab the data from. Is there a way to do this? Or am I asking too much of the mappings here?

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• Application logic for invoicing and subscriptions?

  - by Industrial

  Hi everyone, We're just in the planning stage of a web app that offers subscriptions to our customers. The subscription periods varies and can be prolonged indefinitely by our customers, but are always at least one month (30 days). When a customer signs up, the customer information (billing address, phone number and so on) are stored in a customers table and a subscription is created in the subscriptions table: id | start_date | end_date | customer_id -------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2010-12-31 | 2011-01-31 | 1 Every month we'll loop through the subscriptions table (cronjob preferably) and create invoices for the past subscription period, which are housed in their own table - invoices. Depending on the customer, invoices are manually printed out and sent by mail, or just emailed to the customer. Due to the nature of our customers and the product, we need to offer a variety of different payment alternatives including wire transfer and card payments, hence some invoices may need to be manually handled and registered as paid by our staff. The 15th every month, the invoices table are looped through and if no payment has been marked for the actual invoice, the according subscription will be removed. If there's a payment registered, the end_date in the subscriptions table is incremented by another 30 days (or what now our period our customer has chosen). Are we looking at headaches by incrementing dates forwards and backwards to handle non-paying customers and extending subscriptions? Would it be a better idea to add new subscriptions as customers extends their subscription?

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• Reporting Services Sum of Inner Group in Outer Group

  - by Spoonybard

  I have a report in Reporting Services 2008 using ASP.net 3.5 and SQL Server 2008. The report has 2 groupings and a detail row. This is the current format: Outer Group Inner Group Detail Row The Detail Row represents an item on a receipt and a receipt can have multiple items. Each receipt was paid with a certain payment method. So the Outer Group is grouped by payment type, the Inner Group is grouped by the receipt's ID, and the Detail Row is each item for the given receipt. My raw data result set has two important columns: The Amount Received and the Amount Applied. The Amount Received is how much money in total was collected for all the items on the receipt. The Amount Applied is how much money each item got from the total Amount Received. Sample Result Set: ReceiptID Item ItemID AmountReceived AmountApplied Payment Method ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 Book 1 $200.00 $40.00 Cash 1 CD 2 $200.00 $20.00 Cash 1 Software 3 $200.00 $100.00 Cash 1 Backpack 4 $200.00 $40.00 Cash The Inner Group displays the AmountReceived correctly as $200. However, the Outer Group displays the AmountReceived as $800, because I believe that it is going off each detail row which in this case is a count of 4 items. What I want is to see in the Outer Group that the Amount Received is $200. I tried restricting the scope in my SUM function to be the Inner Group, but I get the error "The scope parameter must be set to a string constant that is equal to either the name of a containing group, the name of a containing data region, or the name of a dataset." Does anyone have any suggestions on how to solve this issue? Thanks.

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• Need help with transferring data between MySQL db's using PHP

  - by JM4

  In one of the sites I manage, the client has decided to take on ACH/Bank Account administration where it was previously outsourced. As a result, the information submitted in our online form which used to simply store in a single database for processing now must sit in 'limbo' until the funds used for payment have been verified. My original plan is as follows: At the end of an enrollment, all form data is collected and stored in a single MySQL database. Our internal administrator will receive an email notification reminding him enrollments have taken place. He will process the ACH information collected and wait the 3-4 business days needed for payment to clear. Once the payment information has been returned as Good (haven't considered what I will do with the 'bad' yet), the administrator can log into a secure portal which allows him to click a button to 'process' the full information once compared and verified. the process is simplified as: Enrollment complete: data stored in DB 'A' Funds verified and link clicked: data from 'A' is copied to DB 'B' and 'A' is deleted. I have run similar processes with CSV output before and simply used //transfers old data to archive $transfer = mysql_query('INSERT INTO '.$archive.' SELECT * FROM '.$table) or die(mysql_error()); //empties existing table $query = mysql_query('TRUNCATE TABLE '.$table) or die(mysql_error()); but in those cases, ALL data returned was copied and deleted. I only want to copy and delete a single record. Any idea how to accomplish this?

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• sql to linq translated code

  - by ognjenb

  SQL: SELECT o.Id, o.OrderNumber, o.Date, d.Name AS 'Distributor', d.Notes AS 'DistrNotes', -- distributer c.Name AS 'Custoer', c.Notes AS 'CustmNotes', -- customer t.Name AS 'Transporter', -- transporter o.InvoiceFile, o.Notes, o.AwbFile, o.TrackingFile, o.Status, o.DeliveryNotification, o.ServiceType, o.ValidityDate, o.DeliveryTime, o.Weight, o.CustomerId, o.CustomerOrderNumber, o.CustomerDate, o.Shipment, o.Payment, o.TransporterId, o.TotalPrice, o.Discount, o.AlreadyPaid, o.Delivered, o.Received, o.OrderEnteredBy, CONCAT(e.Name, ' ', e.Surname) AS 'IBEKO Engineer', o.Confirmed FROM `order` o LEFT JOIN person d ON o.`DistributorId` = d.`Id` LEFT JOIN person c ON o.`CustomerId` = c.Id LEFT JOIN Transporter t ON o.`TransporterId` = t.Id LEFT JOIN IbekoEngineer e ON o.OrderEnteredBy = e.Id LINQ: testEntities6 ordersEntities = new testEntities6(); var orders_query = (from o in ordersEntities.order join pd in ordersEntities.person on o.DistributorId equals pd.Id join pc in ordersEntities.person on o.CustomerId equals pc.Id join t in ordersEntities.transporter on o.TransporterId equals t.Id select new OrdersModel { Id = o.Id, OrderNumber = o.OrderNumber, Date = o.Date, Distributor_Name = pdk.Name, Distributor_Notes = pdk.Notes, Customer_Name = pc.Name, Customer_Notes = pc.Notes, Transporter_Name = t.Name, InvoiceFile = o.InvoiceFile, Notes = o.Notes, AwbFile = o.AwbFile, TrackingFile = o.TrackingFile, Status = o.Status, DeliveryNotification = o.DeliveryNotification, ServiceType = o.ServiceType, ValidityDate = o.ValidityDate, DeliveryTime = o.DeliveryTime, Weight = o.Weight, CustomerId = o.CustomerId, CustomerOrderNumber = o.CustomerOrderNumber, CustomerDate = o.CustomerDate, Shipment = o.Shipment, Payment = o.Payment, TransporterId = o.TransporterId, TotalPrice = o.TotalPrice, Discount = o.Discount, AlreadyPaid = o.AlreadyPaid, Delivered = o.Delivered, Received = o.Received, OrderEnteredBy = o.OrderEnteredBy, Confirmed = o.Confirmed }); I translated the above SQL code into linq. SQL code return data from database but LINQ not return data. Why?

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• Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

  - by raul.goycoolea

  @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Abstract   Reference architecture provides needed architectural information that can be provided in advance to an enterprise to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps business owners to actualize their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. It evaluates the IT systems, based on Reference Architecture goals, principles, and standards. It helps to reduce IT costs by increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc. Telecom Reference Architecture provides customers with the flexibility to view bundled service bills online with the provision of multiple services. It provides real-time, flexible billing and charging systems, to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Enterprises. It lays the foundation for a Telecom Reference Architecture by articulating the requirements, drivers, and pitfalls for telecom service providers. It describes generic reference architecture for telecom enterprises and moves on to explain how to achieve Enterprise Reference Architecture by using SOA.   Introduction   A Reference Architecture provides a methodology, set of practices, template, and standards based on a set of successful solutions implemented earlier. These solutions have been generalized and structured for the depiction of both a logical and a physical architecture, based on the harvesting of a set of patterns that describe observations in a number of successful implementations. It helps as a reference for the various architectures that an enterprise can implement to solve various problems. It can be used as the starting point or the point of comparisons for various departments/business entities of a company, or for the various companies for an enterprise. It provides multiple views for multiple stakeholders.   Major artifacts of the Enterprise Reference Architecture are methodologies, standards, metadata, documents, design patterns, etc.   Purpose of Reference Architecture   In most cases, architects spend a lot of time researching, investigating, defining, and re-arguing architectural decisions. It is like reinventing the wheel as their peers in other organizations or even the same organization have already spent a lot of time and effort defining their own architectural practices. This prevents an organization from learning from its own experiences and applying that knowledge for increased effectiveness.   Reference architecture provides missing architectural information that can be provided in advance to project team members to enable consistent architectural best practices.   Enterprise Reference Architecture helps an enterprise to achieve the following at the abstract level:   ·       Reference architecture is more of a communication channel to an enterprise ·       Helps the business owners to accommodate to their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. ·       Evaluates the IT systems based on Reference Architecture Principles ·       Reduces IT spending through increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc ·       A Real-time Integration Model helps to reduce the latency of the data updates Is used to define a single source of Information ·       Provides a clear view on how to manage information and security ·       Defines the policy around the data ownership, product boundaries, etc. ·       Helps with cost optimization across project and solution portfolios by eliminating unused or duplicate investments and assets ·       Has a shorter implementation time and cost   Once the reference architecture is in place, the set of architectural principles, standards, reference models, and best practices ensure that the aligned investments have the greatest possible likelihood of success in both the near term and the long term (TCO).     Common pitfalls for Telecom Service Providers   Telecom Reference Architecture serves as the first step towards maturity for a telecom service provider. During the course of our assignments/experiences with telecom players, we have come across the following observations – Some of these indicate a lack of maturity of the telecom service provider:   ·       In markets that are growing and not so mature, it has been observed that telcos have a significant amount of in-house or home-grown applications. In some of these markets, the growth has been so rapid that IT has been unable to cope with business demands. Telcos have shown a tendency to come up with workarounds in their IT applications so as to meet business needs. ·       Even for core functions like provisioning or mediation, some telcos have tried to manage with home-grown applications. ·       Most of the applications do not have the required scalability or maintainability to sustain growth in volumes or functionality. ·       Applications face interoperability issues with other applications in the operator's landscape. Integrating a new application or network element requires considerable effort on the part of the other applications. ·       Application boundaries are not clear, and functionality that is not in the initial scope of that application gets pushed onto it. This results in the development of the multiple, small applications without proper boundaries. ·       Usage of Legacy OSS/BSS systems, poor Integration across Multiple COTS Products and Internal Systems. Most of the Integrations are developed on ad-hoc basis and Point-to-Point Integration. ·       Redundancy of the business functions in different applications • Fragmented data across the different applications and no integrated view of the strategic data • Lot of performance Issues due to the usage of the complex integration across OSS and BSS systems   However, this is where the maturity of the telecom industry as a whole can be of help. The collaborative efforts of telcos to overcome some of these problems have resulted in bodies like the TM Forum. They have come up with frameworks for business processes, data, applications, and technology for telecom service providers. These could be a good starting point for telcos to clean up their enterprise landscape.   Industry Trends in Telecom Reference Architecture   Telecom reference architectures are evolving rapidly because telcos are facing business and IT challenges.   “The reality is that there probably is no killer application, no silver bullet that the telcos can latch onto to carry them into a 21st Century.... Instead, there are probably hundreds – perhaps thousands – of niche applications.... And the only way to find which of these works for you is to try out lots of them, ramp up the ones that work, and discontinue the ones that fail.” – Martin Creaner President & CTO TM Forum.   The following trends have been observed in telecom reference architecture:   ·       Transformation of business structures to align with customer requirements ·       Adoption of more Internet-like technical architectures. The Web 2.0 concept is increasingly being used. ·       Virtualization of the traditional operations support system (OSS) ·       Adoption of SOA to support development of IP-based services ·       Adoption of frameworks like Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) and IP Multimedia Subsystem ·       (IMS) to enable seamless deployment of various services over fixed and mobile networks ·       Replacement of in-house, customized, and stove-piped OSS/BSS with standards-based COTS products ·       Compliance with industry standards and frameworks like eTOM, SID, and TAM to enable seamless integration with other standards-based products   Drivers of Reference Architecture   The drivers of the Reference Architecture are Reference Architecture Goals, Principles, and Enterprise Vision and Telecom Transformation. The details are depicted below diagram. @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Figure 1. Drivers for Reference Architecture @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Today’s telecom reference architectures should seamlessly integrate traditional legacy-based applications and transition to next-generation network technologies (e.g., IP multimedia subsystems). This has resulted in new requirements for flexible, real-time billing and OSS/BSS systems and implications on the service provider’s organizational requirements and structure.   Telecom reference architectures are today expected to:   ·       Integrate voice, messaging, email and other VAS over fixed and mobile networks, back end systems ·       Be able to provision multiple services and service bundles • Deliver converged voice, video and data services ·       Leverage the existing Network Infrastructure ·       Provide real-time, flexible billing and charging systems to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. ·       Support charging of advanced data services such as VoIP, On-Demand, Services (e.g.  Video), IMS/SIP Services, Mobile Money, Content Services and IPTV. ·       Help in faster deployment of new services • Serve as an effective platform for collaboration between network IT and business organizations ·       Harness the potential of converging technology, networks, devices and content to develop multimedia services and solutions of ever-increasing sophistication on a single Internet Protocol (IP) ·       Ensure better service delivery and zero revenue leakage through real-time balance and credit management ·       Lower operating costs to drive profitability   Enterprise Reference Architecture   The Enterprise Reference Architecture (RA) fills the gap between the concepts and vocabulary defined by the reference model and the implementation. Reference architecture provides detailed architectural information in a common format such that solutions can be repeatedly designed and deployed in a consistent, high-quality, supportable fashion. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Application Usage and how to achieve the Enterprise Level Reference Architecture using SOA.   • Telecom Reference Architecture • Enterprise SOA based Reference Architecture   Telecom Reference Architecture   Tele Management Forum’s New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) is an architectural framework for organizing, integrating, and implementing telecom systems. NGOSS is a component-based framework consisting of the following elements:   ·       The enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is a business process framework. ·       The Shared Information Data (SID) model provides a comprehensive information framework that may be specialized for the needs of a particular organization. ·       The Telecom Application Map (TAM) is an application framework to depict the functional footprint of applications, relative to the horizontal processes within eTOM. ·       The Technology Neutral Architecture (TNA) is an integrated framework. TNA is an architecture that is sustainable through technology changes.   NGOSS Architecture Standards are:   ·       Centralized data ·       Loosely coupled distributed systems ·       Application components/re-use  ·       A technology-neutral system framework with technology specific implementations ·       Interoperability to service provider data/processes ·       Allows more re-use of business components across multiple business scenarios ·       Workflow automation   The traditional operator systems architecture consists of four layers,   ·       Business Support System (BSS) layer, with focus toward customers and business partners. Manages order, subscriber, pricing, rating, and billing information. ·       Operations Support System (OSS) layer, built around product, service, and resource inventories. ·       Networks layer – consists of Network elements and 3rd Party Systems. ·       Integration Layer – to maximize application communication and overall solution flexibility.   Reference architecture for telecom enterprises is depicted below. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 2. Telecom Reference Architecture   The major building blocks of any Telecom Service Provider architecture are as follows:   1. Customer Relationship Management   CRM encompasses the end-to-end lifecycle of the customer: customer initiation/acquisition, sales, ordering, and service activation, customer care and support, proactive campaigns, cross sell/up sell, and retention/loyalty.   CRM also includes the collection of customer information and its application to personalize, customize, and integrate delivery of service to a customer, as well as to identify opportunities for increasing the value of the customer to the enterprise.   The key functionalities related to Customer Relationship Management are   ·       Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a customer request for products. ·       Create and manage customer profiles. ·       Manage all interactions with customers – inquiries, requests, and responses. ·       Provide updates to Billing and other south bound systems on customer/account related updates such as customer/ account creation, deletion, modification, request bills, final bill, duplicate bills, credit limits through Middleware. ·       Work with Order Management System, Product, and Service Management components within CRM. ·       Manage customer preferences – Involve all the touch points and channels to the customer, including contact center, retail stores, dealers, self service, and field service, as well as via any media (phone, face to face, web, mobile device, chat, email, SMS, mail, the customer's bill, etc.). ·       Support single interface for customer contact details, preferences, account details, offers, customer premise equipment, bill details, bill cycle details, and customer interactions.   CRM applications interact with customers through customer touch points like portals, point-of-sale terminals, interactive voice response systems, etc. The requests by customers are sent via fulfillment/provisioning to billing system for ordering processing.   2. Billing and Revenue Management   Billing and Revenue Management handles the collection of appropriate usage records and production of timely and accurate bills – for providing pre-bill usage information and billing to customers; for processing their payments; and for performing payment collections. In addition, it handles customer inquiries about bills, provides billing inquiry status, and is responsible for resolving billing problems to the customer's satisfaction in a timely manner. This process grouping also supports prepayment for services.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       To ensure that enterprise revenue is billed and invoices delivered appropriately to customers. ·       To manage customers’ billing accounts, process their payments, perform payment collections, and monitor the status of the account balance. ·       To ensure the timely and effective fulfillment of all customer bill inquiries and complaints. ·       Collect the usage records from mediation and ensure appropriate rating and discounting of all usage and pricing. ·       Support revenue sharing; split charging where usage is guided to an account different from the service consumer. ·       Support prepaid and post-paid rating. ·       Send notification on approach / exceeding the usage thresholds as enforced by the subscribed offer, and / or as setup by the customer. ·       Support prepaid, post paid, and hybrid (where some services are prepaid and the rest of the services post paid) customers and conversion from post paid to prepaid, and vice versa. ·       Support different billing function requirements like charge prorating, promotion, discount, adjustment, waiver, write-off, account receivable, GL Interface, late payment fee, credit control, dunning, account or service suspension, re-activation, expiry, termination, contract violation penalty, etc. ·       Initiate direct debit to collect payment against an invoice outstanding. ·       Send notification to Middleware on different events; for example, payment receipt, pre-suspension, threshold exceed, etc.   Billing systems typically get usage data from mediation systems for rating and billing. They get provisioning requests from order management systems and inquiries from CRM systems. Convergent and real-time billing systems can directly get usage details from network elements.   3. Mediation   Mediation systems transform/translate the Raw or Native Usage Data Records into a general format that is acceptable to billing for their rating purposes.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Mediation system in the end-to-end solution.   ·       Collect Usage Data Records from different data sources – like network elements, routers, servers – via different protocol and interfaces. ·       Process Usage Data Records – Mediation will process Usage Data Records as per the source format. ·       Validate Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Segregates Usage Data Records coming from each source to multiple, based on the segregation requirement of end Application. ·       Aggregates Usage Data Records based on the aggregation rule if any from different sources. ·       Consolidates multiple Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Delivers formatted Usage Data Records to different end application like Billing, Interconnect, Fraud Management, etc. ·       Generates audit trail for incoming Usage Data Records and keeps track of all the Usage Data Records at various stages of mediation process. ·       Checks duplicate Usage Data Records across files for a given time window.   4. Fulfillment   This area is responsible for providing customers with their requested products in a timely and correct manner. It translates the customer's business or personal need into a solution that can be delivered using the specific products in the enterprise's portfolio. This process informs the customers of the status of their purchase order, and ensures completion on time, as well as ensuring a delighted customer. These processes are responsible for accepting and issuing orders. They deal with pre-order feasibility determination, credit authorization, order issuance, order status and tracking, customer update on customer order activities, and customer notification on order completion. Order management and provisioning applications fall into this category.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       Issuing new customer orders, modifying open customer orders, or canceling open customer orders; ·       Verifying whether specific non-standard offerings sought by customers are feasible and supportable; ·       Checking the credit worthiness of customers as part of the customer order process; ·       Testing the completed offering to ensure it is working correctly; ·       Updating of the Customer Inventory Database to reflect that the specific product offering has been allocated, modified, or cancelled; ·       Assigning and tracking customer provisioning activities; ·       Managing customer provisioning jeopardy conditions; and ·       Reporting progress on customer orders and other processes to customer.   These applications typically get orders from CRM systems. They interact with network elements and billing systems for fulfillment of orders.   5. Enterprise Management   This process area includes those processes that manage enterprise-wide activities and needs, or have application within the enterprise as a whole. They encompass all business management processes that   ·       Are necessary to support the whole of the enterprise, including processes for financial management, legal management, regulatory management, process, cost, and quality management, etc.;   ·       Are responsible for setting corporate policies, strategies, and directions, and for providing guidelines and targets for the whole of the business, including strategy development and planning for areas, such as Enterprise Architecture, that are integral to the direction and development of the business;   ·       Occur throughout the enterprise, including processes for project management, performance assessments, cost assessments, etc.     (i) Enterprise Risk Management:   Enterprise Risk Management focuses on assuring that risks and threats to the enterprise value and/or reputation are identified, and appropriate controls are in place to minimize or eliminate the identified risks. The identified risks may be physical or logical/virtual. Successful risk management ensures that the enterprise can support its mission critical operations, processes, applications, and communications in the face of serious incidents such as security threats/violations and fraud attempts. Two key areas covered in Risk Management by telecom operators are:   ·       Revenue Assurance: Revenue assurance system will be responsible for identifying revenue loss scenarios across components/systems, and will help in rectifying the problems. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Revenue Assurance system in the end-to-end solution. o   Identify all usage information dropped when networks are being upgraded. o   Interconnect bill verification. o   Identify where services are routinely provisioned but never billed. o   Identify poor sales policies that are intensifying collections problems. o   Find leakage where usage is sent to error bucket and never billed for. o   Find leakage where field service, CRM, and network build-out are not optimized.   ·       Fraud Management: Involves collecting data from different systems to identify abnormalities in traffic patterns, usage patterns, and subscription patterns to report suspicious activity that might suggest fraudulent usage of resources, resulting in revenue losses to the operator.   The key roles and responsibilities of the system component are as follows:   o   Fraud management system will capture and monitor high usage (over a certain threshold) in terms of duration, value, and number of calls for each subscriber. The threshold for each subscriber is decided by the system and fixed automatically. o   Fraud management will be able to detect the unauthorized access to services for certain subscribers. These subscribers may have been provided unauthorized services by employees. The component will raise the alert to the operator the very first time of such illegal calls or calls which are not billed. o   The solution will be to have an alarm management system that will deliver alarms to the operator/provider whenever it detects a fraud, thus minimizing fraud by catching it the first time it occurs. o   The Fraud Management system will be capable of interfacing with switches, mediation systems, and billing systems   (ii) Knowledge Management   This process focuses on knowledge management, technology research within the enterprise, and the evaluation of potential technology acquisitions.   Key responsibilities of knowledge base management are to   ·       Maintain knowledge base – Creation and updating of knowledge base on ongoing basis. ·       Search knowledge base – Search of knowledge base on keywords or category browse ·       Maintain metadata – Management of metadata on knowledge base to ensure effective management and search. ·       Run report generator. ·       Provide content – Add content to the knowledge base, e.g., user guides, operational manual, etc.   (iii) Document Management   It focuses on maintaining a repository of all electronic documents or images of paper documents relevant to the enterprise using a system.   (iv) Data Management   It manages data as a valuable resource for any enterprise. For telecom enterprises, the typical areas covered are Master Data Management, Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence. It is also responsible for data governance, security, quality, and database management.   Key responsibilities of Data Management are   ·       Using ETL, extract the data from CRM, Billing, web content, ERP, campaign management, financial, network operations, asset management info, customer contact data, customer measures, benchmarks, process data, e.g., process inputs, outputs, and measures, into Enterprise Data Warehouse. ·       Management of data traceability with source, data related business rules/decisions, data quality, data cleansing data reconciliation, competitors data – storage for all the enterprise data (customer profiles, products, offers, revenues, etc.) ·       Get online update through night time replication or physical backup process at regular frequency. ·       Provide the data access to business intelligence and other systems for their analysis, report generation, and use.   (v) Business Intelligence   It uses the Enterprise Data to provide the various analysis and reports that contain prospects and analytics for customer retention, acquisition of new customers due to the offers, and SLAs. It will generate right and optimized plans – bolt-ons for the customers.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Business Intelligence system at the Enterprise Level:   ·       It will do Pattern analysis and reports problem. ·       It will do Data Analysis – Statistical analysis, data profiling, affinity analysis of data, customer segment wise usage patterns on offers, products, service and revenue generation against services and customer segments. ·       It will do Performance (business, system, and forecast) analysis, churn propensity, response time, and SLAs analysis. ·       It will support for online and offline analysis, and report drill down capability. ·       It will collect, store, and report various SLA data. ·       It will provide the necessary intelligence for marketing and working on campaigns, etc., with cost benefit analysis and predictions.   It will advise on customer promotions with additional services based on loyalty and credit history of customer   ·       It will Interface with Enterprise Data Management system for data to run reports and analysis tasks. It will interface with the campaign schedules, based on historical success evidence.   (vi) Stakeholder and External Relations Management   It manages the enterprise's relationship with stakeholders and outside entities. Stakeholders include shareholders, employee organizations, etc. Outside entities include regulators, local community, and unions. Some of the processes within this grouping are Shareholder Relations, External Affairs, Labor Relations, and Public Relations.   (vii) Enterprise Resource Planning   It is used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the enterprise and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise wide system environment.   The key roles and responsibilities for Enterprise System are given below:   ·        It will handle responsibilities such as core accounting, financial, and management reporting. ·       It will interface with CRM for capturing customer account and details. ·       It will interface with billing to capture the billing revenue and other financial data. ·       It will be responsible for executing the dunning process. Billing will send the required feed to ERP for execution of dunning. ·       It will interface with the CRM and Billing through batch interfaces. Enterprise management systems are like horizontals in the enterprise and typically interact with all major telecom systems. E.g., an ERP system interacts with CRM, Fulfillment, and Billing systems for different kinds of data exchanges.   6. External Interfaces/Touch Points   The typical external parties are customers, suppliers/partners, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders. External interactions from/to a Service Provider to other parties can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, including:   ·       Exchange of emails or faxes ·       Call Centers ·       Web Portals ·       Business-to-Business (B2B) automated transactions   These applications provide an Internet technology driven interface to external parties to undertake a variety of business functions directly for themselves. These can provide fully or partially automated service to external parties through various touch points.   Typical characteristics of these touch points are   ·       Pre-integrated self-service system, including stand-alone web framework or integration front end with a portal engine ·       Self services layer exposing atomic web services/APIs for reuse by multiple systems across the architectural environment ·       Portlets driven connectivity exposing data and services interoperability through a portal engine or web application   These touch points mostly interact with the CRM systems for requests, inquiries, and responses.   7. Middleware   The component will be primarily responsible for integrating the different systems components under a common platform. It should provide a Standards-Based Platform for building Service Oriented Architecture and Composite Applications. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Middleware component in the end-to-end solution.   ·       As an integration framework, covering to and fro interfaces ·       Provide a web service framework with service registry. ·       Support SOA framework with SOA service registry. ·       Each of the interfaces from / to Middleware to other components would handle data transformation, translation, and mapping of data points. ·       Receive data from the caller / activate and/or forward the data to the recipient system in XML format. ·       Use standard XML for data exchange. ·       Provide the response back to the service/call initiator. ·       Provide a tracking until the response completion. ·       Keep a store transitional data against each call/transaction. ·       Interface through Middleware to get any information that is possible and allowed from the existing systems to enterprise systems; e.g., customer profile and customer history, etc. ·       Provide the data in a common unified format to the SOA calls across systems, and follow the Enterprise Architecture directive. ·       Provide an audit trail for all transactions being handled by the component.   8. Network Elements   The term Network Element means a facility or equipment used in the provision of a telecommunications service. Such terms also includes features, functions, and capabilities that are provided by means of such facility or equipment, including subscriber numbers, databases, signaling systems, and information sufficient for billing and collection or used in the transmission, routing, or other provision of a telecommunications service.   Typical network elements in a GSM network are Home Location Register (HLR), Intelligent Network (IN), Mobile Switching Center (MSC), SMS Center (SMSC), and network elements for other value added services like Push-to-talk (PTT), Ring Back Tone (RBT), etc.   Network elements are invoked when subscribers use their telecom devices for any kind of usage. These elements generate usage data and pass it on to downstream systems like mediation and billing system for rating and billing. They also integrate with provisioning systems for order/service fulfillment.   9. 3rd Party Applications   3rd Party systems are applications like content providers, payment gateways, point of sale terminals, and databases/applications maintained by the Government.   Depending on applicability and the type of functionality provided by 3rd party applications, the integration with different telecom systems like CRM, provisioning, and billing will be done.   10. Service Delivery Platform   A service delivery platform (SDP) provides the architecture for the rapid deployment, provisioning, execution, management, and billing of value added telecom services. SDPs are based on the concept of SOA and layered architecture. They support the delivery of voice, data services, and content in network and device-independent fashion. They allow application developers to aggregate network capabilities, services, and sources of content. SDPs typically contain layers for web services exposure, service application development, and network abstraction.   SOA Reference Architecture   SOA concept is based on the principle of developing reusable business service and building applications by composing those services, instead of building monolithic applications in silos. It’s about bridging the gap between business and IT through a set of business-aligned IT services, using a set of design principles, patterns, and techniques.   In an SOA, resources are made available to participants in a value net, enterprise, line of business (typically spanning multiple applications within an enterprise or across multiple enterprises). It consists of a set of business-aligned IT services that collectively fulfill an organization’s business processes and goals. We can choreograph these services into composite applications and invoke them through standard protocols. SOA, apart from agility and reusability, enables:   ·       The business to specify processes as orchestrations of reusable services ·       Technology agnostic business design, with technology hidden behind service interface ·       A contractual-like interaction between business and IT, based on service SLAs ·       Accountability and governance, better aligned to business services ·       Applications interconnections untangling by allowing access only through service interfaces, reducing the daunting side effects of change ·       Reduced pressure to replace legacy and extended lifetime for legacy applications, through encapsulation in services   ·       A Cloud Computing paradigm, using web services technologies, that makes possible service outsourcing on an on-demand, utility-like, pay-per-usage basis   The following section represents the Reference Architecture of logical view for the Telecom Solution. The new custom built application needs to align with this logical architecture in the long run to achieve EA benefits.   Packaged implementation applications, such as ERP billing applications, need to expose their functions as service providers (as other applications consume) and interact with other applications as service consumers.   COT applications need to expose services through wrappers such as adapters to utilize existing resources and at the same time achieve Enterprise Architecture goal and objectives.   The following are the various layers for Enterprise level deployment of SOA. This diagram captures the abstract view of Enterprise SOA layers and important components of each layer. Layered architecture means decomposition of services such that most interactions occur between adjacent layers. However, there is no strict rule that top layers should not directly communicate with bottom layers.   The diagram below represents the important logical pieces that would result from overall SOA transformation. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 3. Enterprise SOA Reference Architecture 1.          Operational System Layer: This layer consists of all packaged applications like CRM, ERP, custom built applications, COTS based applications like Billing, Revenue Management, Fulfilment, and the Enterprise databases that are essential and contribute directly or indirectly to the Enterprise OSS/BSS Transformation.   ERP holds the data of Asset Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain, and Advanced Procurement and Human Capital Management, etc.   CRM holds the data related to Order, Sales, and Marketing, Customer Care, Partner Relationship Management, Loyalty, etc.   Content Management handles Enterprise Search and Query. Billing application consists of the following components:   ·       Collections Management, Customer Billing Management, Invoices, Real-Time Rating, Discounting, and Applying of Charges ·       Enterprise databases will hold both the application and service data, whether structured or unstructured.   MDM - Master data majorly consists of Customer, Order, Product, and Service Data.     2.          Enterprise Component Layer:   This layer consists of the Application Services and Common Services that are responsible for realizing the functionality and maintaining the QoS of the exposed services. This layer uses container-based technologies such as application servers to implement the components, workload management, high availability, and load balancing.   Application Services: This Service Layer enables application, technology, and database abstraction so that the complex accessing logic is hidden from the other service layers. This is a basic service layer, which exposes application functionalities and data as reusable services. The three types of the Application access services are:   ·       Application Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application level functionalities as a reusable service between BSS to BSS and BSS to OSS integration. This layer is enabled using disparate technology such as Web Service, Integration Servers, and Adaptors, etc.   ·       Data Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application data services as a reusable reference data service. This is done via direct interaction with application data. and provides the federated query.   ·       Network Access Service: This Service Layer exposes provisioning layer as a reusable service from OSS to OSS integration. This integration service emphasizes the need for high performance, stateless process flows, and distributed design.   Common Services encompasses management of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data such as information services, portal services, interaction services, infrastructure services, and security services, etc.   3.          Integration Layer:   This consists of service infrastructure components like service bus, service gateway for partner integration, service registry, service repository, and BPEL processor. Service bus will carry the service invocation payloads/messages between consumers and providers. The other important functions expected from it are itinerary based routing, distributed caching of routing information, transformations, and all qualities of service for messaging-like reliability, scalability, and availability, etc. Service registry will hold all contracts (wsdl) of services, and it helps developers to locate or discover service during design time or runtime.   • BPEL processor would be useful in orchestrating the services to compose a complex business scenario or process. • Workflow and business rules management are also required to support manual triggering of certain activities within business process. based on the rules setup and also the state machine information. Application, data, and service mediation layer typically forms the overall composite application development framework or SOA Framework.   4.          Business Process Layer: These are typically the intermediate services layer and represent Shared Business Process Services. At Enterprise Level, these services are from Customer Management, Order Management, Billing, Finance, and Asset Management application domains.   5.          Access Layer: This layer consists of portals for Enterprise and provides a single view of Enterprise information management and dashboard services.   6.          Channel Layer: This consists of various devices; applications that form part of extended enterprise; browsers through which users access the applications.   7.          Client Layer: This designates the different types of users accessing the enterprise applications. The type of user typically would be an important factor in determining the level of access to applications.   8.          Vertical pieces like management, monitoring, security, and development cut across all horizontal layers Management and monitoring involves all aspects of SOA-like services, SLAs, and other QoS lifecycle processes for both applications and services surrounding SOA governance.     9.          EA Governance, Reference Architecture, Roadmap, Principles, and Best Practices:   EA Governance is important in terms of providing the overall direction to SOA implementation within the enterprise. This involves board-level involvement, in addition to business and IT executives. At a high level, this involves managing the SOA projects implementation, managing SOA infrastructure, and controlling the entire effort through all fine-tuned IT processes in accordance with COBIT (Control Objectives for Information Technology).   Devising tools and techniques to promote reuse culture, and the SOA way of doing things needs competency centers to be established in addition to training the workforce to take up new roles that are suited to SOA journey.   Conclusions   Reference Architectures can serve as the basis for disparate architecture efforts throughout the organization, even if they use different tools and technologies. Reference architectures provide best practices and approaches in the independent way a vendor deals with technology and standards. Reference Architectures model the abstract architectural elements for an enterprise independent of the technologies, protocols, and products that are used to implement an SOA. Telecom enterprises today are facing significant business and technology challenges due to growing competition, a multitude of services, and convergence. Adopting architectural best practices could go a long way in meeting these challenges. The use of SOA-based architecture for communication to each of the external systems like Billing, CRM, etc., in OSS/BSS system has made the architecture very loosely coupled, with greater flexibility. Any change in the external systems would be absorbed at the Integration Layer without affecting the rest of the ecosystem. The use of a Business Process Management (BPM) tool makes the management and maintenance of the business processes easy, with better performance in terms of lead time, quality, and cost. Since the Architecture is based on standards, it will lower the cost of deploying and managing OSS/BSS applications over their lifecycles.

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