The challenge
The founder of JOX IT Alex Odesser was assigned for the
development of a new job control system. This should
fulfil different requirements, in order to guarantee a
secured, structured and comfortable operational sequence.
To the new automation Tool among other things were placed
following requirements:
- Multi server ability
- Administration of several environments (markets)
- Multi instance jobs
- Free configurable output
- Flexible user administration
The solution
Talkline introduced with JOX a centralized Process
automation tool providing apart from a comprehensive
documentation the automated logical and temporally
co-ordinated execution of all individual processes
and applications. To the characteristics of JOX belong:
Multi-server ability
JOX makes possible to run production processes on several
servers in parallel considering the dependencies of all jobs
on different server. All necessary properties and
dependencies, which were administered before in NABS
operational and JobMaintenance, were transferred to the
JOX Repository.
Administration of several environments
(markets)
To the time of the introduction Talkline processed
the billing for two different Telco markets.
These two environments differentiated from each other
not only from the performance - point of view (different
databases from different size), but also in the operating
frequency and in the functionality;
besides these were administrated by different instances.
JOX could easily integrate and work in parallel on both
environments.
In the course of the project existed the necessity
apart from the production environment to develop a test
environment, in order to test new versions of the NABS
modules. This was separated from production by a Firewall
and could be operated therefore independently.
The exchange of the job definitions between production
and test environment takes place since then over the
JOX XML interface fast and easy.
Multi instance jobs
The structure of the NABS - modules permits
a configuration
with that a module is executed in multiple
processes each responsibly for in-certain data
segment parallel.
In JOX this structure was so implemented by
"multi instance jobs", that both every individual
instance of such module could be controlled as an
individual JOX - job and all instances of such job
can be for example repeated by few mouseklicks.
If therefore the processing of a segment fails, not
the processing of all segments, but artlessly only the
appropriate process must be repeated after the removal
of the error cause.
Free configurable output
The NABS - modules were implemented initially
for the background execution; therefore we had no
possibility to display the success-relevant output
of executed module directly. The output was always in a
log file in specially pre-defined directories.
However it is sometimes indispensable for the user to
display these output files and be able to analyse it fast
and easy. To give consideration to this task the log-
and report-files for all modules were defined in JOX as
associated files, so that they could be indicated directly
by JOX client application.
Some of these files were too large to
display it whole on the client site (for development
reason up to 4 GB) so we implemented additionally
server based filter functionalities.
Role-based user administration
To meet the requirements of the complex developed system
JOX was extended by a role-based user administration. This
multi-level user concept offers practical systematic at
permissions for certain actions, which can or may
be processed on the system. Access permissions are divided
in up to four categories:
| Administrator |
comprehensive permissions in the
respective defined environment |
| Master |
design of the process and
interference into production |
| Operator |
parameterisation and implementing
of pre-defined processes, no change at the
process definition |
| Reviewer |
monitoring activity, no actions
|
Successful employment
JOX is successfully used by Talkline for the
NABS-operations in the following core ranges:
- Billing (preparation, production, QA, undo)
- Rating
- End of day/week/month/year processing
- Bank- & collection interfaces
Additionally automates JOX meanwhile also
- Offline billing - TID-acceptance, rating,
transfer controlling
- Commission - import, reset, test- &
accounting
On the basis of already in JOX implemented processes
Talkline developed using JOX the new spreading the
whole accounting and billing process for
monitoring and controlling of the billing system.
The Talkline staff is able at each time
to display the actual state of billing and
each individual process over a web interface.
Flexibility
In the summer 2004 the NABS - system was migrated to the
new hardware architecture. If in former times the system had
2 cluster nodes, there are now 4 logical hosts. The billing
transformation took place by JOX smooth:
- The process chains in the old environment was
stopped
- The environment including all data bases and file
systems were transferred to the new hardware
- Necessary adjustments took place in the
JOX configuration
- Production was again taken up in the new environment
