Open APIs

 View Only
  • 1.  Reporting API

    Posted Jun 09, 2021 09:13
    Hi fellows,

    is there an API for reporting? Like for Service and business metrics? What I think of is an event pushing reporting like presented there: Microservices AntiPatterns and Pitfalls

    Thank you in advance and best regards,
    Daniel

    ------------------------------
    Daniel Rogowski
    NetCom BW
    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.
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Reporting API

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 09, 2021 10:41
    Hi Daniel
    Can you give some more specific examples of business areas where you feel that APIs might be valuable.
    I suspect that it will be very challenging to standardize reporting requirements, each CSP is likely to have different report needs. But maybe others feel differently.

    ------------------------------
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: Reporting API

    Posted Jun 10, 2021 03:18
    Hi Jonathan,

    typical data in which our business departments are always interested in are product orders / cancellations and billing. Since there are API's for product ordering and billing, I thought maybe data capturing might also be integrated. The actual data aggregation and reporting would need to be specialized and not be part of the standard.

    Since we are at it: Which API would you suggest for processing cancellations?

    Thank you very much and best regards,
    Daniel

    ------------------------------
    Daniel Rogowski
    NetCom BW
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: Reporting API

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 10, 2021 04:04
    Thanks for the clarification and example. But it's still not clear to me what exactly you expect from a reporting API.
    Perhaps you can make a high-level suggestion for a signature.

    ------------------------------
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: Reporting API

    Posted Jun 10, 2021 04:28
    I just realized there already is an API feature we could use to fulfill our needs: The events. Our own data capturing service would just need to listen to the appropriate events and get all the data it needs.

    Thank you for the discussion.

    ------------------------------
    Daniel Rogowski
    NetCom BW
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 6.  RE: Reporting API

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 10, 2021 11:52
    That's certainly an option. But you should be aware that you need to handle situations such as:
    • Initial setup, you'll somehow need to populate your reporting copy with existing data
    • Discrepancies between the data master and your event-driven reporting copy due to missed events
    Hope it helps

    ------------------------------
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 7.  RE: Reporting API

    Posted Jun 11, 2021 10:09
    Thank you for the pointers.
    • Initial setup: The service we are building is really new, so there are no data to get from a legacy system.
    • potential discrepancies: Our events go through a RabbitMQ. Therefore, fortunately, it's just a matter of configuration.


    ------------------------------
    Daniel Rogowski
    NetCom BW
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 8.  RE: Reporting API

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 11, 2021 10:49
    Daniel - you said: Our events go through a RabbitMQ
    Perhaps it's being paranoid, but don't assume that Rabbit (or Kafka, or any other message bus) is foolproof. It is possible that events can be missed, or that your consuming software fails to read the events correctly, or that your providing software fails to send an event after making the entity update.
    Data consistency is a minefield.


    ------------------------------
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 9.  RE: Reporting API

    Posted Jun 11, 2021 11:02
    Edited by Daniel Rogowski Jun 11, 2021 11:04
    It needs to be reviewed and tested of course. At the other hand: There is no such thing as defect-free software (most of the time). It just needs to be good enough to get the job done.

    ------------------------------
    Daniel Rogowski
    NetCom BW
    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.
    ------------------------------