Open APIs

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  • 1.  ProductSpecCharacteristics

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Sep 16, 2019 02:01

    Hi All,

    I have a couple of questions regarding product characteristics.

    Assume there's an MSISDN Product Spec. This will have an "msisdn" number productSpecCharacteristic.

    In the CRM system, we have an option of choosing msisdn number via 3 methods.

    1. Automatic. In this case, the msisdn number has to be fetched automatically from resource inventory.
    2. Manual. In this case, User may be able to specify his chosen suffix.
    3. Token. In this case, User might give a token with which he has reserved an msisdn number.

     

    1. My question is, does it make sense to model this as a "SelectionType" characteristic with values such as "Automatic, Manual, Token" along with productSpecCharRelationship? or should it not be part of product characteristic as it is only used to fetch the characteristic during product purchase?. In the latter case, is it related to ProductConfiguration from SID. (I admit that I've not explored the configuration part).
    2. How will the CRM know that msisdn has to be fetched from a resource inventory if we are going by a catalog driven model where CRM doesn't want to hard code msisdn product logic?. Should it traverse from ProductSpecification to ResourceSpecification and figure that out?
    3. How is characteristic linking between Specifications at different layers defined in OpenAPI?. E.g.

    In the SID Product document, there's a MailBox product with "MailBoxSize" as a product characteristic with values as "Basic" and "High Volume". In CFSSpec, these values translate to "10MB" and "20MB". But how is the char/charValue in product domain and service/resource domain linked in the api data model?

     

     

    -shibin



  • 2.  RE: ProductSpecCharacteristics

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Sep 18, 2019 04:15
    Hi Shibin
    1. The selection type can influence the price, one can imagine that a manually-specified logical resource might cost more than an automatic resource. For this reason it can make sense to retain as a product characteristic. However I would agree with you that there is a case for allowing characteristics at Order level that don't need to be persisted in the inventory. This would require enhancements in the Open API model and also in the underlying SID information framework.
    2. If you indeed choose to model selection type as a Product characteristic, then the CRM system will have the information in the catalog model, as a product spec characteristic. You would still need code in the CRM system to understand the semantic meaning of these valid values (auto, manual, token).
    3. I am not sure that we have a good solution in the API model for characteristic mapping - we have the mapping at the level of specification (product spec is implemented by service specs and resource specs) but not for characteristics. The SID has explicit mapping between product characteristics and service (or resource) characteristics, and even between values. Probably this needs to be enhanced into the Open API model, and I have opened a JIRA issue to document this.
    Hope it helps

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    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
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