The Java Specification Request 264
Order Management API 1.0, has been released. It is one of the latest APIs specified within the OSS through Java Initiative (
OSS/J). Operations Support System (OSS) are systems used by telecommunications service providers to manage their Network and IT infrastructure.
The Order Management API proposes a generic interface capable of handling Product, Service, Resource and WorkOrder Orders. It will also support your own definition of an order by extending the generic orders. To our best knowledge, the Order Management API is the only open and standardized API available for order management, relevant to any organization developing order management solutions. Your Order Management solution based on this API reuses the wealth of the OM domain knowledge captured in the API (not reinventing the wheel). You are reducing your development and integration costs, creating a flexible Order Management solution.
Beside the value the API is delivering on its own, it has been closely integrated with three other either new or maintained OSS/J APIs, defined within the Java Community Process (
JCP): The OSS Trouble Ticket API (
JSR 91), the OSS Inventory API (
JSR 142) and the Fault Management API (
JSR 265). With this new release, users now have a consistent set of standard interfaces built on a
common foundation that enables rapid creation of OSS solutions, including supporting SOA Architectures.
Offering WebServices, XML Messaging and EJB Integration Profile
New to this release, three integration profiles that use Java, XML messaging or Web Services, are provided to support tightly coupled, loosely coupled or B2B integration scenarios, in the eTOM’s Operations Support and Readiness, Fulfillment and Assurance.
"
The addition of XML and Web Services integration profiles to OSS/J is great. This allows web services platforms to offer services that are standards-based using standard data formats. We are looking forward to leveraging this as we extend our Web Services platform." Says Kumar Rajan, Executive Director, Verizon Business IT.
Order Management is a very common approach to interface and manage the business processes and virtually every organization does some sort of Order Management. This ensures that it can process requests from its customers, delivering the requested products or services. Although the OSS/J APIs has originally been targeted for OSS applications we have ensured that the OM API could alos be used in other domains or industries.
Order Management API Key Features
The key OM API features are:
- Support for creation, starting, updating and removal of Orders;
- Extensibility. The types of orders, their content and states can be extended for your specific needs;
- Support for static and dynamic typing of attributes of an Order and Order Items;
- Flexible query capabilities like query by a Key, query based on a template, named queries (comparable to JDBC Prepared Statements);
- Support for both simple and complex use cases;
- Support for long running transactions;
- Definition of the managed entities upon which the Order Management API is based (Order, OrderItems, etc). The Core Business Entities (CBE) have been extended from the Telemanagement Forums Shared Information/Data Model (SID). The Entities used are the non Telecommunications specific;
- Definition of the (extensible) state model for Orders and OrderItems;
- Support for bulk operations to create, update or remove orders. These are available in an atomic (all must succeed) or best effort (failed items will be reported) mode of operations;
- Support for bulk orders, orders that aggregate other orders.
- Support for notification to keep OM clients informed of the progress of an Order (not only clients that submitted an order but also other interested clients);
- Notifications – OM System can request the client to validate certain aspects of the order (before it continuing processing);
- Notifications – OM System can request the client to provide additional input (before it continues processing);
- Support meta-operations. For example, enable a client to discover at runtime what Order types, Products, Services, attributes, queries or optional features are supported by a particular OM System (implementing the API);
The Order Management API applications are not limited to OSS or Telecommunications. The API will support your definition of order types and and thus can be configured to support specific needs of other industries. To ensure that the operations exposed by the Order Management API are not bound to any specific industry, a generic type ‘Request’ has been defined. This Request type is the supertype for all Orders and all Order Management API operations operate on Requests. You can define your own Order types as subtypes of the Request, or as a subtype of one of the four predefined Request subtypes: ProductOrder, ServiceOrder, ResourceOrder, WorkOrder (WorkOrders are frequently used to manage Workforce requests).
Free With Sources: Reference Implementation and Technology Compatibility Kit
All JSR’s defined within the Java Community Process are provided with a Reference Implementation (RI) and a Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK). The JSR 264 specification can be downloaded from the
JCP website. The RI and TCK are available at the
TelemanagementForum website. More information on JSR264 can be found at the
JSR264 java.net site. They all come with sources and licenses that make it easy for everybody to draw immediate value from them. The RI can be deployed on the latest
Glassfish (JavaEE SDK) application server. Others can be supported with small modifications. The TCK can be run against any JSR 264 Implementation and can be used to test the Implementation compatibility with the API Specification. TCK run against an Implementation will produce a test report that can be used by the implementation organization to certify the
Implementation/SW Product as JSR 264 compliant.
References And Further Reading And Listening
- Introduction to Order Management API
- OSS/J & Order Management Community
- Generic Information
