Search Results

Search found 68155 results on 2727 pages for 'data security'.

facebook twitter digg google delicious technorati stumbleupon myspace wordpress linkedin gmail igoogle windows live tumblr viadeo yahoo buzz yahoo mail yahoo bookmarks favorites email print

Page 147/2727 | < Previous Page | 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154  | Next Page >

  • Google Analytics data Missing for 4 days

    - by Shumaila
    I used wrong tracking id in my E-commerce tracking code for Google analytics and missed the data for few days. To add that missing data in my account I have written a short script which manually send all orders data for four days to GA account but what my concern is date : Those orders which already placed on different dates and , when if I run my script and so it will send my missing data with current date , which I do not want. ( I want to send date when that order is actually placed) do anyone help me with this ? I am really much stuck with my work here.

    Read the article

  • Silverlight 3.0 and ADO.NET data service framework(An error occurred while processing this request)

    - by ybbest
    Today , I try to write a Silverlight app that talks to SharePoint 2010 using the REST API.However after deploy the silverlight app and run the code , I got the following error.In order to fix this I need to make the target framework of your caller application to 4.0,in this case I need to use Silverlight 4.0 instead 3.0.After I have done that and redeploy the solution to the SharePoint.It works like a charm.   Exceptions details: System.Data.Services.Client.DataServiceQueryException: An error occurred while processing this request. Request version ’1.0′ is too low for the response. The lowest supported version is ’2.0′. However , if you got the error like this: Could not load type ‘System.Data.Services.Providers.IDataServiceUpdateProvider’ from assembly ‘System.Data.Services, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089′,then you need to install ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 ,you can download here (for windowns 7 and server 2008 r2 ) or here (for windows vista of server 2008).

    Read the article

  • PHP class data implementation

    - by Bakanyaka
    I'm studying OOP PHP and have watched two tutorials that implement user login\registration system as an example. But implementation varies. Which way will be more correct one to work with data such as this? Load all data retrieved from database as array into a property called something like _data on class creation and further methods operate with this property Create separate properties for each field retrieved from database, on class creation load all data fields into respective properties and operate with that properties separately? Then let's say I want to create a method that returns a list of all users with their data. Which way is better? Method that returns just an array of userdata like this: Array([0]=>array([id] => 1, [username] => 'John', ...), [1]=>array([id] => 2, [username] => 'Jack', ...), ...) Method that creates a new instance of it's class for each user and returns an array of objects

    Read the article

  • Using PDO for Data Management

    - by edorahg
    This question is more a design oriented question than a code specific question. I am new to PHP and I am planning to use PDO as a data access layer. Say for instance I have a class called CITY. Now if I need to create an instance of this class, what is the best technique. Should have a singleton DB access class which is used to write and read data from the db layer. OR should I delegate it to the individual class object. For example if I invoke city.save() (city is a class), then the city class will handle the saving of that city object's data into the database. Excuse my ignorance but i have a java background and therefore trying to understand what is the best design principle for data management when using php.

    Read the article

  • CellC data card not recognized if I boot with it in

    - by Armien
    In 11.10 I find that I can connect to the internet via broadband connection successfully. The problem is that I cannot have the data card attached to the machine while the machine boots up. If I leave the data card in the machine during startup, the data card is not picked up and I then cannot connect to the internet. I must first boot up my machine, login, attach the data card into the usb port, wait so 30 seconds. The broadband connection name will then appear in the network dropdown at the top of the screen. An internet connect is now possible via broadband. Please let me know what must be done to fix this.

    Read the article

  • TSQL Challenge 83 - Compare rows in the same table and group the data

    The challenge is to compare the data of the rows and group the input data. The data needs to be grouped based on the Product ID, Date, TotalLines, LinesOutOfService. NEW! Deployment Manager Early Access ReleaseDeploy SQL Server changes and .NET applications fast, frequently, and without fuss, using Deployment Manager, the new tool from Red Gate. Try the Early Access Release to get a 20% discount on Version 1. Download the Early Access Release.

    Read the article

  • A Safe Way to Allow Upload of All File Types?

    - by user34682
    By default WordPress restricts the file types that can be uploaded to /uploads using the default Media Manager. I know it is possible to manually extend the allowed file types. I also know it is possible to change functions.php to allow ALL file types to be uploaded. This restriction obviously exists for security concerns - e.g. someone could upload a harmful .exe Would it not be possible to allow secure upload of all filetypes by setting the permissions of the /uploads directory to prevent execution of any of its contents? Thus it wouldn't matter if someone uploaded a harmful file because it would not be executable on the server...

    Read the article

  • Can't view order in magento

    - by koko
    Hi, I've been setting up a fresh magento 1.4.0.1 install, working great so far. I did some test orders just to see. Everything works fine, but when I click on "view order" under "my orders", I get a bunch of error messages: There has been an error processing your request Notice: iconv_substr() [function.iconv-substr]: Unknown error (0) in /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Helper/String.php on line 98 Trace: #0 [internal function]: mageCoreErrorHandler(8, 'iconv_substr() ...', '/data/web/A1423...', 98, Array) #1 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Helper/String.php(98): iconv_substr('1', 0, 50, 'UTF-8') #2 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Helper/String.php(173): Mage_Core_Helper_String-substr('1', 0, 50) #3 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Helper/String.php(112): Mage_Core_Helper_String-str_split('1', 50) #4 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/design/frontend/base/default/template/sales/order/items/renderer/default.phtml(58): Mage_Core_Helper_String-splitInjection('1') #5 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(189): include('/data/web/A1423...') #6 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(225): Mage_Core_Block_Template-fetchView('frontend/base/d...') #7 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(242): Mage_Core_Block_Template-renderView() #8 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(674): Mage_Core_Block_Template-_toHtml() #9 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Sales/Block/Items/Abstract.php(137): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-toHtml() #10 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/design/frontend/base/default/template/sales/order/items.phtml(52): Mage_Sales_Block_Items_Abstract-getItemHtml(Object(Mage_Sales_Model_Order_Item)) #11 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(189): include('/data/web/A1423...') #12 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(225): Mage_Core_Block_Template-fetchView('frontend/base/d...') #13 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(242): Mage_Core_Block_Template-renderView() #14 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(674): Mage_Core_Block_Template-_toHtml() #15 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(516): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-toHtml() #16 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(467): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-_getChildHtml('order_items', true) #17 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/design/frontend/base/default/template/sales/order/view.phtml(64): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-getChildHtml('order_items') #18 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(189): include('/data/web/A1423...') #19 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(225): Mage_Core_Block_Template-fetchView('frontend/base/d...') #20 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(242): Mage_Core_Block_Template-renderView() #21 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(674): Mage_Core_Block_Template-_toHtml() #22 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(516): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-toHtml() #23 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(463): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-_getChildHtml('sales.order.vie...', true) #24 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Page/Block/Html/Wrapper.php(52): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-getChildHtml('', true, true) #25 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(674): Mage_Page_Block_Html_Wrapper-_toHtml() #26 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Text/List.php(43): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-toHtml() #27 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(674): Mage_Core_Block_Text_List-_toHtml() #28 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(516): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-toHtml() #29 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(467): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-_getChildHtml('content', true) #30 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/design/frontend/base/default/template/page/2columns-left.phtml(48): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-getChildHtml('content') #31 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(189): include('/data/web/A1423...') #32 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(225): Mage_Core_Block_Template-fetchView('frontend/base/d...') #33 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(242): Mage_Core_Block_Template-renderView() #34 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(674): Mage_Core_Block_Template-_toHtml() #35 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Layout.php(536): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-toHtml() #36 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Controller/Varien/Action.php(389): Mage_Core_Model_Layout-getOutput() #37 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Sales/controllers/OrderController.php(100): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Action-renderLayout() #38 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Sales/controllers/OrderController.php(136): Mage_Sales_OrderController-_viewAction() #39 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Controller/Varien/Action.php(418): Mage_Sales_OrderController-viewAction() #40 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Controller/Varien/Router/Standard.php(254): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Action-dispatch('view') #41 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Controller/Varien/Front.php(177): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Router_Standard-match(Object(Mage_Core_Controller_Request_Http)) #42 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/App.php(304): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Front-dispatch() #43 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/Mage.php(596): Mage_Core_Model_App-run(Array) #44 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/index.php(78): Mage::run('', 'store') #45 {main} gtx, koko

    Read the article

  • Authenticated WCF: Getting the Current Security Context

    - by bradhe
    I have the following scenario: I have various user's data stored in my database. This data was entered via a web app. We'd like to expose this data back to the user over a web service so that they can integrate their data with their applications. We would also like to expose some business logic over these services. As such we do not want to use OData. This is a multi-tenant application so I only want to expose their data back to them and not other users. Likewise, the business logic we expose should be relative to the authenticated user. I would like let the user use an OASIS scheme to authenticate with the web service -- WCF already allows for this out of the box as far as I understand -- or perhaps we can issue them certificates to authenticate with. That bit hasn't really been worked out yet. Here is a bit of pseudo-code of how I envision this would work within the service: function GetUsersData(id) var user := Lookup User based on Username from Auth Context var data := Get Data From Repository based on "user" return data end function For the business logic scenario I think it would look something like this: function PerformBusinessLogic(someData) var user := Lookup User based on Username from Auth Context var returnValue := Perform some logic based on supplied data return returnValue end function The hard bit here is getting the current username (or cert info in the cert scenario) that the user authenticated with! Does WCF even enable this scenario? If not would WSE3 enable this? Thanks,

    Read the article

  • Network authentication + roaming home directory - which technology should I look into using?

    - by Brian
    I'm looking into software which provides a user with a single identity across multiple computers. That is, a user should have the same permissions on each computer, and the user should have access to all of his or her files (roaming home directory) on each computer. There seem to be many solutions for this general idea, but I'm trying to determine the best one for me. Here are some details along with requirements: The network of machines are Amazon EC2 instances running Ubuntu. We access the machines with SSH. Some machines on this LAN may have different uses, but I am only discussing machines for a certain use (running a multi-tenancy platform). The system will not necessarily have a constant amount of machines. We may have to permanently or temporarily alter the amount of machines running. This is the the reason why I'm looking into centralized authentication/storage. The implementation of this effect should be a secure one. We're unsure if users will have direct shell access, but their software will potentially be running (under restricted Linux user names, of course) on our systems, which is as good as direct shell access. Let's assume that their software could potentially be malicious for the sake of security. I have heard of several technologies/combinations to achieve my goal, but I'm unsure of the ramifications of each. An older ServerFault post recommended NFS & NIS, though the combination has security problems according to this old article by Symantec. The article suggests moving to NIS+, but, as it is old, this Wikipedia article has cited statements suggesting a trending away from NIS+ by Sun. The recommended replacement is another thing I have heard of... LDAP. It looks like LDAP can be used to save user information in a centralized location on a network. NFS would still need to be used to cover the 'roaming home folder' requirement, but I see references of them being used together. Since the Symantec article pointed out security problems in both NIS and NFS, is there software to replace NFS, or should I heed that article's suggestions for locking it down? I'm tending toward LDAP because another fundamental piece of our architecture, RabbitMQ, has a authentication/authorization plugin for LDAP. RabbitMQ will be accessible in a restricted manner to users on the system, so I would like to tie the security systems together if possible. Kerberos is another secure authentication protocol that I have heard of. I learned a bit about it some years ago in a cryptography class but don't remember much about it. I have seen suggestions online that it can be combined with LDAP in several ways. Is this necessary? What are the security risks of LDAP without Kerberos? I also remember Kerberos being used in another piece of software developed by Carnegie Mellon University... Andrew File System, or AFS. OpenAFS is available for use, though its setup seems a bit complicated. At my university, AFS provides both requirements... I can log in to any machine, and my "AFS folder" is always available (at least when I acquire an AFS token). Along with suggestions for which path I should look into, does anybody have any guides which were particularly helpful? As the bold text pointed out, LDAP looks to be the best choice, but I'm particularly interested in the implementation details (Keberos? NFS?) with respect to security.

    Read the article

  • Data recovery; nearly 1 tb of movies on a WD 3.5 tb personal cloud drive disappears with scanty traces

    - by Effector Dhanushanth
    I have a great collection of movies that I had stored in a logical mesh of folder on my 3.5 tb WD personal cloud drive. I woke up 1 morning and found that everything was fine with my data on this drive, except for my movie collection: There were two great folders, one "2sort" nd the other "segregated". out of all the segregated sub folders, only letter C D and 2 or 3 others remain. and the 2 sort folder, which has umpteen subfolders, amounting to more than 0.5 tb. is.. it's just gone!! this is a great downfall.. now this is a personal cloud drive and has no usb port etc. unfortunately to hardwire and recover files.. now I'm sure there are softwares out there that can help me recover my beloved movies from such an interestingly "hard-to-reach" (should I say?) device? what may that software be compadre, my happiness lies within your answer.. thank you.. remember, recovery software or (WD) personal cloud. :) these ovies were All, "hand-picked", over the course of ten years.. I just never catalogued my collection.. if I could just get the "list" of my lost collection, that'd be enough.. recovering em would be a bonus.. but they out to be damaged if I were to somehow recover you know? still, I'm certain they're all intact.. I guess the file index just got corrupted.. There surely is a veil of some sort that need to be thrown or pushed aside to reveal my movies.. what software can do/does that? thanks immensely!

    Read the article

  • WCF client encrypt message to JAVA WS using username_token with message protection client policy

    - by Alex
    I am trying to create a WCF client APP that is consuming a JAVA WS that uses username_token with message protection client policy. There is a private key that is installed on the server and a public certificate file was exported from the JKS keystore file. I have installed the public key into certificate store via MMC under Personal certificates. I am trying to create a binding that will encrypt the message and pass the username as part of the payload. I have been researching and trying the different configurations for about a day now. I found a similar situation on the msdn forum: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/wcf/thread/ce4b1bf5-8357-4e15-beb7-2e71b27d7415 This is the configuration that I am using in my app.config <customBinding> <binding name="certbinding"> <security authenticationMode="UserNameOverTransport"> <secureConversationBootstrap /> </security> <httpsTransport requireClientCertificate="true" /> </binding> </customBinding> <endpoint address="https://localhost:8443/ZZZService?wsdl" binding="customBinding" bindingConfiguration="cbinding" contract="XXX.YYYPortType" name="ServiceEndPointCfg" /> And this is the client code that I am using: EndpointAddress endpointAddress = new EndpointAddress(url + "?wsdl"); P6.WCF.Project.ProjectPortTypeClient proxy = new P6.WCF.Project.ProjectPortTypeClient("ServiceEndPointCfg", endpointAddress); proxy.ClientCredentials.UserName.UserName = UserName; proxy.ClientCredentials.ClientCertificate.SetCertificate(StoreLocation.CurrentUser, StoreName.My, X509FindType.FindByThumbprint, "67 87 ba 28 80 a6 27 f8 01 a6 53 2f 4a 43 3b 47 3e 88 5a c1"); var projects = proxy.ReadProjects(readProjects); This is the .NET CLient error I get: Error Log: Invalid security information. On the Java WS side I trace the log : SEVERE: Encryption is enabled but there is no encrypted key in the request. I traced the SOAP headers and payload and did confirm the encrypted key is not there. Headers: {expect=[100-continue], content-type=[text/xml; charset=utf-8], connection=[Keep-Alive], host=[localhost:8443], Content-Length=[731], vsdebuggercausalitydata=[uIDPo6hC1kng3ehImoceZNpAjXsAAAAAUBpXWdHrtkSTXPWB7oOvGZwi7MLEYUZKuRTz1XkJ3soACQAA], SOAPAction=[""], Content-Type=[text/xml; charset=utf-8]} Payload: <s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:u="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd"><s:Header><o:Security s:mustUnderstand="1" xmlns:o="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"><o:UsernameToken u:Id="uuid-5809743b-d6e1-41a3-bc7c-66eba0a00998-1"><o:Username>admin</o:Username><o:Password>admin</o:Password></o:UsernameToken></o:Security></s:Header><s:Body xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"><ReadProjects xmlns="http://xmlns.dev.com/WS/Project/V1"><Field>ObjectId</Field><Filter>Id='WS-Demo'</Filter></ReadProjects></s:Body></s:Envelope> I have also tryed some other bindings but with no success: <basicHttpBinding> <binding name="basicHttp"> <security mode="TransportWithMessageCredential"> <message clientCredentialType="Certificate"/> </security> </binding> </basicHttpBinding> <wsHttpBinding> <binding name="wsBinding"> <security mode="Message"> <message clientCredentialType="UserName" negotiateServiceCredential="false" /> </security> </binding> </wsHttpBinding> Your help will be greatly aprreciatted! Thanks!

    Read the article

  • 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.

    Read the article

  • VLC (Server) re-stream Security Camera Feed

    - by Aaron
    I purchased a Swann Home Security DVR system and was hoping for some help on how to duplicate the streaming video on my server. In order to get their web view (streaming video in the browser) to work, I had to install the following plugins: HiDvrPlugin.dmg for mac. Hidvrocx.cab for Windows. I was originally thinking it was a sign of some form of DRM? Maybe. Maybe not. HTML wise, the following code is in the source of the safari version of the web view: <embed pluginspage="SurveilClient.dmg" width="10px" height="10px" type="application/x-scplugin" id="MacDiv" style="height: 592px; width: 720px; left: 278px; top: 61px; "> It seems to be the main display area. Using wireshark, I am able to see that the video stream is on port 9000. However, I have no idea what type of stream it is. I've tried opening it in VLC with no such luck. http://dvr_ip:9000 tcp://dvr_ip:9000 My hope was to do the following to redistribute the feed vlc dvr_ip:9000 --sout h264-version-on-localhost:3000 TLDR; Trying to re-distribute a stream from a security camera (can't tell the format) using vlc (re-distribute via h.264 / HTML5). Not sure how to accomplish this. Is it possible that the software has some type of DRM that only the plugins can decode?

    Read the article

  • Windows Server 2003 R2 Terminal Server : Internet Explorer Enhanced Security won't disable for Users

    - by Tubs
    The Internet Explorer Enhanced Security (IEES) won't disable using the normal method of disabling it from the Add/Remove Programs/Windows components. This came to light immediately after testing. IEES was disabled after Terminal Services were installed for admin and users, and after IE8 was installed. My initial thoughts were that there was some clash between IE8 and IE6 (which is the default on 2003 R2), so I uninstalled IE8 and reverted back to IE6. The same symptoms were displayed, when a normal user logged on Internet Explorer Enhnaced Security was enforced. I then thought it could be a problem that Terminal Server wasn't recognising the removal as IEES was on when initially installed. I uninistalled the Terminal Server Componants using the server roles, and then reactivated and deavtived IEES. Windows Server 2003 R2 allows a limited number of users to connect to RDP by default, so I logged on as a normal user, and IEES was disabled. I then reinstalled Terminal Server, and logged on as a normal user. IEES was back enabled. Why is this?

    Read the article

  • Cisco ASA Act as a Hardware Security Module?

    - by Derek
    Hello, We have a partner that is requiring us to get a HSM for a web application that we host for them. This is something new for us, we've always installed our SSL certificates on our web servers and never needed a hardware device. We currently have 2 Cisco ASA 5510 firewalls in an active/standby configuration. Both ASAs have a ASA-SSM-10 security module installed in them. The web application is a standard HTTPS webpage with no authentication required. I was wondering if we could use our Cisco ASAs to meet this requirement or if we'll have to buy another device. I was doing some searching and read about Cisco's clientless webvpn feature. It sounds like it might work, but I'm not sure. We basically want the ASA to handle the SSL and proxy the connection to our web servers. We do not want to prompt for a username or password to connect or show any portals, just display the web page. If the ASA cannot do this, does any one have any recommendations for network attached hardware security modules? We are using VMware vCenter, so we'd rather have an external device attached to the network, rather than buying HSM cards for every ESXi host. Thanks, Derek

    Read the article

  • How do I use Sketchflow sample data for a ListBoxItem Template at design time?

    - by Boris Nikolaevich
    I am using Expression Blend 4 and Visual Studio 2010 to create a Sketchflow prototype. I have a Sample Data collection and a ListBox that is bound to it. This displays as I would expect both at design time and at run time. However, the ListBoxItem template it just complex enough that I wanted to pull it out into its own XAML file. Even though the items still render as expected in the main ListBox where the template is used, when I open the template itself, all of the databound controls are empty. If I add a DataContext to the template, I can see and work with the populated objects while in the template, but then that local DataContext overrides the DataContext set on the listbox. A bit of code will illustrate. Start by creating a Sketchflow project (I am using Silverlight, but it should work the same for WPF), then add a project data source called SampleDataSource. Add a collection called ListData, with a single String property called Title. Here is the (scaled down) code for the main Sketchflow screen, which we'll call Main.xaml: <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:DemoScreens" mc:Ignorable="d" x:Class="DemoScreens.Main" Width="800" Height="600"> <UserControl.Resources> <ResourceDictionary> <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> <ResourceDictionary Source="ProjectDataSources.xaml"/> </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> <DataTemplate x:Key="ListBoxItemTemplate"> <local:DemoListBoxItemTemplate d:IsPrototypingComposition="True" Margin="0,0,5,0" Width="748"/> </DataTemplate> </ResourceDictionary> </UserControl.Resources> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="#5c87b2" DataContext="{Binding Source={StaticResource SampleDataSource}}"> <ListBox Background="White" x:Name="DemoList" Style="{StaticResource ListBox-Sketch}" Margin="20,100,20,20" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource ListBoxItemTemplate}" ItemsSource="{Binding ListData}" ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Disabled"/> </Grid> </UserControl> You can see that it references the DemoListBoxItemTemplate, which is defined in its own DemoListBoxItemTemplate.xaml: <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:DemoScreens" mc:Ignorable="d" x:Class="DemoScreens.DemoListBoxItemTemplate"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" Style="{StaticResource BasicTextBlock-Sketch}" Width="150"/> </Grid> </UserControl> Obviously, this is way simpler than my actual listbox, but it should be enough to illustrate my problem. When you open Main.xaml in the Expression designer, the list box is populated with sample data. But when you open DemoListBoxItemTemplate.xaml, there is no data context and therefore no data to display—which makes it more difficult to identify controls visually. How can I have sample data displayed when I am working with the template, while still allowing the larger set of sample data to be used for the ListBox itself?

    Read the article

facebook twitter digg google delicious technorati stumbleupon myspace wordpress linkedin gmail igoogle windows live tumblr viadeo yahoo buzz yahoo mail yahoo bookmarks favorites email print

< Previous Page | 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154  | Next Page >