Open APIs

Hello,

I have a question about modeling and using products in the Open APIs.

Where or how do you model unique product characteristics/attributes for specific products (e.g. IMEI and EID for cell phones, ICCID for sim cards or Mac address for router hardware)? As far as I understand, product specification and product characteristics refer to configurable product attributes or attributes that are identical for all products of this type (same article number). But my attributes mentioned above exist for every product of a category/product class, but each specific product has a different value. 

The entity 'product' contains a 'productSerialNumber' but this is located directly on product level. I don't understand this, as the product entity is mostly used without reference to an concrete, physical product, e.g. when querying the product stock. A ProductStock has a StockedProduct and not a list of actual stocked, physical products (with different serial numbers).. So why is this attribute available on this level?

Unfortunately, after reading some documents and API specifications, it is not clear to me where or how the difference is made between a general product description (title, article number, product features, etc.) and a specific uniquely identifiable product (incl. serial number, etc.). 

Can someone give me a hint on how to model a list of unique product attributes or in which documents I can search for a recommendation?

Thanks in advance

Hi,

for general understanding of the TM Forum product catalogue, GB922 - Product guide is the bible. Search for "MSISDN" in the guide to understand how "unique product attributes" are defined ("product attributes" are called Product "characteristics" in the TM Forum Information Model Framework)

TMF620 is the product catalague API and the data model for Product "characteristics" is very similar to the Information Model Framework

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Kind regards,

Matthieu Hattab
Lyse Platform
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