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  • 1.  RelatedParty: how to make one role required?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 12, 2022 13:23
    We're managing a logical resource inventory, where each resource has associated contact (support) information - I was looking at RelatedParty to support this, but since contact information is required for these resources, I'm not sure how best to handle, with RelatedParty being an array. Am I on the right track or is there a better method?

    Appreciate any insights -

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    Karen Aiken
    Strategy Manager, Integration Architecture
    TELUS
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  • 2.  RE: RelatedParty: how to make one role required?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 16, 2022 06:12
    RelatedParty is probably the best alternative. You could use a role of support, the RelatedParty pointer, and on the underlying related Party or PartyRole you have contact means.
    Hope it helps

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    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
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  • 3.  RE: RelatedParty: how to make one role required?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 16, 2022 10:52
    Thanks Jonathan -

    This gets us most of the way - what I'm missing is how to then define the support role as being a required role, since RelatedParty is an optional attribute. The only way I can think to make support contact information required would be to extend RelatedParty as RelatedParty_Support, and making that a required property.

    I'm not sure if we're over-engineering this.

    Take care,
    Karen

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    Karen Aiken
    Strategy Manager, Integration Architecture
    TELUS
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  • 4.  RE: RelatedParty: how to make one role required?
    Best Answer

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 16, 2022 11:06
    Requiring a related party for every resource seems to be an overreach. MSISDN (for example) is a logical resource, would you really have a mandatory relationship to a support person for every MSISDN in the TELUS mobile inventory (millions)?
    An alternative approach might be to identify the types of logical resource that really do need a support contact, and for those resource types only to have a mandatory characteristic that could point to the support contact, or directly to the contact medium.
    Does this make sense?

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    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
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  • 5.  RE: RelatedParty: how to make one role required?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 16, 2022 11:44
    Yes it does - Thanks Jonathan!

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    Karen Aiken
    Strategy Manager, Integration Architecture
    TELUS
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  • 6.  RE: RelatedParty: how to make one role required?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 16, 2022 11:50
    Hi Karen,

    I believe that would be over-engineering.

    An API should be to be robust and stable over time. OpenAPI describes the syntax of messages, but syntactically correct messages can still be rejected at runtime for semantical reasons. In many applications semantical rules can be configured in an application and don't require a new software release. Array in the OpenAPI are exactly introduced for allowing that flexibility.

    Regards


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    Koen Peeters
    OryxGateway
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