DESIGN OF A BILLING SYSTEM FOR A

Transcription

1 Master degree report DESIGN OF A BILLING SYSTEM FOR A RADIO TETRA NETWORK BASED ON OPEN SOURCE SOLUTION By AYMEN SOUISSI In fulfillment of INTERNATIONAL MASTER ON COMMUNICATION NETWORKS ENGINEERING SCUOLA SUPERIORE SANT ANNA 2006/2007 Academic tutor M. PIERO CASTOLDI ALTEN tutor M. FRANCESCO ABBENANTE

2 This work is dedicated to My Mother Aïcha, My father Ahmed, And My brothers Nabil and Anis!

3 Acknowledgements I am motivated to express my gratitude to all those that let me do this internship in the best conditions. To people from Scuola Superiore Sant Anna, ALSTOM and ALTEN and especially: - M. Piero Castoldi: director of the master IMCNE Scuola Superiore Sant Anna - M. Claudio Manfroni: tutor of the master IMCNE Scuola Superiore Sant Anna - M. Francesco Abbenante Orangee Roma - M. Giuseppe Castrogiuvanni Orangee Roma

4 Contents Chapter 1 Introduction Company overview Description of the project Context Statement of the project... 2 Chapter 2 Adempiere vs. OpenCRX Evaluation criteria Functional fit Flexibility Support Continuity Maturity Overview of Adempiere and OpenCRX systems Comparison table Adempiere OpenCRX Conclusion Chapter 3 Presentation of Adempiere About Adempiere Adempiere project structure Goals of Adempiere project The target market Adempiere installation Installing Adempiere server Creating Adempiere database Setting up the Adempiere server Overview of some function Menus Business Partner management Product management Sales order management Chapter 4 Project overview and realization Functional description Analyses and idea Possible realization Faced problems Chapter 5 Conclusion and perspectives i

5 Glossary CDR CORBA CRM ERP ICT JCA JMS RMI SCADA SOAP Call Data Record Common Object Request Broker Architecture Customer Relationship Management Enterprise Resources Planning Information and Communication Technologies J2EE Connector architecture Java Message Service Remote Method Invocation Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition Simple Object Access Protocol ii

6 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Company overview Orangee s.r.l is a software engineering company that, beyond software development, offers advising services in the ICT fields. Orangee already counts a various productive deployment in the national territory and foreign countries. In the company headquarter based in Rome, Orangee not only delivers advising services for important public organizations (P.A., Poste Italiane, Laziomatica) and private ones (Porto di Civitavecchia, Artigiancassa, SDA Express Courrier), but also provides a central laboratory for software development. In Rende is located the research and development center of the company, while in Milan are focalized the ICT advising activities in the branch of telecommunications (Wind, Italtel). In the Tunisian branch, research and development activities for the internationalization of Orangee products are carried on. Orangee is distinguished by a high technological vocation that represents a true competitive factor. The market of Orangee is represented by medium and large sized customer companies in all the segments of the market, in private sector as well as public sector. Orangee, strong of a high expertise, comes to the health sector on the earlier 2003 through an industrial initiative of the Ministry of Productive Activities. The mission of Orangee takes part on the platforms of E-Healthcare Intelligence a market of modern conception that derives its contents from intersection between two markets: E-Healthcare and Information Intelligence. In this area, Orangee creates innovative software instruments for the management of the clinical processes in the sanitary companies. It also products scalable systems for the collection and the analysis of high value added information. Through the use of the most modern methodologies and technologies and thanks to a consolidated ability of planning and realization of systems based on open source software, Orangee is positioned like an innovative actor on the market of the producers of services and products for the sanitary companies. 1

7 Moreover, the company is certified UNI ISO 9000:2001 in the "Development and Planning of Information Systems and Assistance Services" field. 1.2 Description of the project Context In the recent years, operators are facing an exponential growth of the number of their subscribers. For a better management of this remarkable set of users, the operators need a quick and strong billing system able to follow this increase. The idea of seeking open source tools is mainly for profit purposes. In fact, the idea of the project is to study in details the functionalities of open source CRM/ERP systems and study the possibility to adapt one of them to realize a billing system project Statement of the project Studying the possibility of developing a billing system based on open source CRM software. The first step will be the choice of which open source tool to use. This will be done by studying the different existing open source CRM software and then comparing them, for the actual requirements only two systems to be studied: OpenCRX and Adempiere. After choosing the working tool comes the second step which consists on the adaptation process. At this point, we will try to translate the project requirements into the open source tool in order to gain the maximum of its functionalities. 2

8 Chapter 2 Adempiere vs. OpenCRX 2.1 Evaluation criteria The criteria introduced now will be decisive for showing the strengths, weaknesses and differences between the two ERP systems Adempiere and OpenCRX. This five evaluation criteria are: - Functional fit - Flexibility - Support o Customization o Flexible upgrades o Internationalization o User friendliness o Architecture o Scalability o Security o Interfaces o Operation system independence o Database independence o Programming language o Support infrastructure o Training o Documentation 3

9 - Continuity - Maturity o Project structure o Community activity o Transparency o Update frequency o Development status o Reference sites Functional fit Functional fit is used for the company s perspective. It is the degree the chosen ERP system fits to the business processes out-of-the-box. The higher the fit is the lower are the customization and implementation costs. Functional fit has a high impact on total cost and implementation time Flexibility Flexibility allows bridging the functionality gap between out-of-the-box functionality and the close functionality fit provided by a customized system. Apart from the opportunity to adapt the system to optimal business processes, flexibility also implies questions of ease of use and administration, and platform independence. A flexible ERP system meets the following criteria: a. Customization Depending on the degree of customization needed and the skill levels of the ERP system experts, different levels for customization should be provided. High level customization through meta data editing. The system is customizable by editing easily readable and understandable data, instead of doing low-level coding in a programming language. Low level customization useful for developers who want to dive further into details and need more flexibility the system should also be usable as a framework for application development. b. Flexible upgrades As customizations are defined as meta data and custom code, which must meet the conventions of the framework, it is possible to provide an upgrade procedure without impact on customizations. Due to this clear separation and the service engine approach, upgrades of the core system do not induce new adoptions of customizations. c. Internationalization The system supports multiple languages, multiple accounting, and costing schemes, as well as multiple sites. 4

10 d. User friendliness The user interface should be designed according to the information needed for a task. A simple task shall not require navigating through many screens. e. Architecture Important for most flexibility factors is the chosen architecture. The open source solutions have 2-tier or 3-tier architectures. The 2-tier or client-server architecture consists of a fat client containing GUI, and business logic, communicating directly with the database. In the case of 3-tier architecture the client is just responsible for GUI and simple data validation. f. Scalability The system should support high transaction volumes with constant response times. Scalability is highly dependent on the architecture and thus on the application server and database technology used. g. Security User or better role-based security mechanisms allow the definition of different levels of access rights. Users are allowed to view and change only the data they need for their work. The granularity can be defined on form, field and row level. Row level security restricts access on data level. For example, a user can only see transactions of the affiliate he is responsible for. h. Interfaces An interface is a communication boundary of an ERP System. It is used to connect the ERP system with other systems or to generally exchange data. The 5

11 former is known as Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and uses standardized server side interfaces like CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), XML-RPC (XML- Remote Procedure Call) and SOAP (Standardized Object Access Protocol) to automate the business processes beyond system boundaries. i. OS independence Operation system independence allows you to run the ERP system on various platforms. It is a necessary feature on the client side, if the users have different operating systems. j. DB independence The database has high influence on the scalability of the system. There is a trade-off between database independence and database features, especially the object relational features used. High database independence also implies using a minimal common feature set provided by all supported databases. k. Programming language The language can be a criterion to leverage available skills for low level customization Support Support helps to shorten the implementation time due to the knowledge transfer to the company. It helps to develop internal skills or engage external consultants for implementing and maintaining an open source ERP system. a. Support infrastructure Reliable and responsive support is important. It can be local or online. Most open source ERP projects solve the problems regarding different national requirements through a partner network. b. Training Here the quality and frequency of user and technical trainings or the organization of regular conferences are of certain importance. c. Documentation Completeness and up-to-dateness of the user and developer documentation are needed. Many projects use a Wiki content management system for collaborative documentation authoring and maintenance Continuity Project continuity ensures that our ERP system expenses are a sustained investment. When you focus on one system, you also run the risk that the system will be no longer endorsed. Continuity of an ERP system depends on criteria listed below: a. Project structure The evaluated projects are company or community driven. 6

12 Company driven means that the company is responsible for development, provides services, and certifies partners for local support. Community driven means that the development is cooperative and there is no single company solely responsible. b. Community activity As the community size is not measurable, its communication activity is measurable in certain communication channels. Here the number of messages in forums and mailing lists is used. Besides quantity, qualified answers and response times are important. Documentation activities like web site creation and Wiki entries form a part of support/documentation. c. Transparency This is about entry barriers for developers and possibilities for the community to contribute to and influence the process, the quality of project management as well as the documentation of the development process. A reliable, documented roadmap helps to estimate the current focus and future direction of the project. d. Upgrade frequency The continuous introduction of new functionality and the fixing of bugs are a proof of development continuity. A change log document informing about features of a new release shows past update activity Maturity Maturity means the quality of the software. Whereas flexibility is about technical concepts and the design of the software, maturity tells you how well and bug free it is implemented and tested. a. Development status Some open source ERP packages are not ready for production yet. The concept of the development status of Source Forge is also applied to non Source Forge hosted open source projects. They can be in the state of planning, alpha, beta or stable. b. Reference site The quality of a stable release can be proofed by implementing and extensive testing of the software. There is the risk that the system turns out to be inadequate. Thus it is better to see the ERP system in practice and discuss implementation and operational issues with a customer who already uses and knows the system. Reference sites listed on the project home page and the availability of documented business cases are the relevant criteria. 2.2 Overview of Adempiere and OpenCRX systems First, a brief comparison table is introduced. Later, both systems will be described in details. 7

13 2.2.1 Comparison table Legend: Yes x no? Unknown + Above Average Average - Below Average Evaluation criteria Open Source ERP System # Sub Criteria Adempiere OpenCRX SIZE Micro Small + + Medium + + Large? + FUNCTIONALITY Number of tables 595 (with meta data) 248 e-commerce? Accounting POS? Inventory & Warehouse FLEXIBILITY Customization + + Flexible upgrades + + Internationalization + + User friendliness + Architecture Fat 2-tier/3-tier 3 and 4-tier Scalability + + Security + + Interfaces CSV, XML RMI, Corba, JMS, JCA, SOAP (planned) OS independence DB independence ~ (Oracle, PostgreSQL) Programming language Java Java SUPPORT Support infrastructure? + Training?? Documentation ~ + CONTINUITY Project structure company driven, partner network Community activity + ~ Transparency + + 8

14 Update frequency + ~ MATURITY Development status Stable Stable Reference site + + OTHER License GNU General Public License (GPL) BSD License Online demo SourceForge hosted CVS access Project start Adempiere License: GNU General Public License (GPL) Status: stable Adempiere # Sub-Criteria Description FLEXIBILITY 1 Customization meta data (application dictionary) editing 2 Flexible upgrades for high level customizations 3 Internationalization multi-language 4 User friendliness 5 Architecture Fat 2-tier/3-tier 6 Scalability Good 7 Security 8 Interfaces 9 OS independence Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X 10 DB independence Oracle, PostgreSQL 11 Programming Java Language SUPPORT 1 Support infrastructure wiki, forums 2 Training 3 Documentation Average CONTINUITY 1 Project structure community driven 2 Community activity % (SourceForge source) 3 Transparency roadmap, change log, bug tracking, CVS access is public 4 Update frequency Excellent MATURITY 1 Development status MayDay (Release 320) is declared stable enough for production 9

15 2 Reference site many reference sites F1 Customization Adempiere inherited the Adaptative Data Dictionary from the Compiere project. This architecture allows for the extension of the database data dictionary concept into the application, which in turn allows for the management of the application's entities and their validation rules, as well as screen layout and display logic from within the application itself. A WfMC (Workflow Management Coalition) and Object Management Group (OMG) standards based workflow engine is utilized to provide Business Process Management. These features allow for the rapid customization of the application to a business needs as it evolves. F5 Architecture Based on Compiere, we couldn t find the exact architecture of Adempiere. The Adempiere architecture is close to following: OpenCRX License: BCS Open Source License (BSL) Status: stable OpenCRX # Sub-Criteria Description FLEXIBILITY 1 Customization XML-based customization, straight-forward, fast, and flexible 2 Flexible upgrades 3 Internationalization multi-language 4 User friendliness intuitive Web GUI 5 Architecture multitude of deployment scenarios 10

16 6 Scalability Excellent 7 Security enterprise-class role-based security 8 Interfaces support of RMI, CORBA, JMS, SOAP, and JCA 9 OS independence platform-neutral: any OS running supported App/WebServer including Linux, AIX, Unix, Windows, Mac OS 10 DB independence Oracle, DB2, MS SQL, PostgreSQL, or MySQL 11 Programming Java Language SUPPORT 1 Support infrastructure wiki, forums 2 Training 3 Documentation Javadoc and UML published CONTINUITY 1 Project structure community driven 2 Community activity % (SourceForge source) 3 Transparency roadmap, change log, bug tracking 4 Update frequency Good MATURITY 1 Development status Stable 2 Reference site Many reference sites F5 Architecture OpenCRX allows 4 most common deployment scenarios: - 3-Tier with Application server - 4-Tier with Application Server 11

17 - 4-Tier with Clustered Application Servers - 4-Tier with Servlet Engine F6 Scalability OpenCRX is quite unique in terms of scalability because we can deploy the exact same application to a laptop (single user installation), to our company server (multi user installation), or to a globally distributed cluster (enterprise-class installation) without changing a single line of code. F7 Security OpenCRX is offering enterprise-class role-based security which enables administrators to effectively manage principals, roles, and permissions. Furthermore, the powerful role-based approach to manage permissions enables the business side 12

18 to control access to information with the appropriate granularity (e.g. access to teaminformation can be strictly limited to team members). The following chart shows a simplified view of the role-based security implemented by OpenCRX: F8 Interfaces OpenCRX provides an easy integration with existing applications. It supports all common technologies like RMI, CORBA, JMS, SOAP, and JCA. OpenCRX also includes smart front-ends for typical add-ons like document management, inventory tracking, facility management, etc Conclusion Adempiere and OpenCRX are the best existing open source ERP solutions nowadays. Adempiere inherits most of its module from Compiere software, one of the most deployed and secure open source ERP in the market and is much better for reports generating (reports generated in PDF form whereas OpenCRX generates RTF and HTML reports, PDF reporting still a project). Publication of Javadoc and UML of OpenCRX allows better understanding of source code and helps a lot for new modules development. At the end of this comparative study, and for an existing assistance reference and popularity reasons, Adempiere is chosen to be the system used for the billing project. So the coming parts will take this in consideration. 13

19 Chapter 3 Presentation of Adempiere 3.1 About Adempiere The Adempiere project was created in September 2006 after a long running disagreement between Compiere Inc., the developers of Compiere, and the community that was formed around that project. The community believed that Compiere Inc. placed too much emphasis on the open source lock-in/commercial nature of the project, rather than the community sharing/enriching nature of the project and after an impassioned discussion decided to split from Compiere giving birth to the Adempiere project. 3.2 Adempiere project structure As a community based project and with a community members in over 30 countries stretched across five continents, and for practical purposes the project is guided by a council of founders. A leader is nominated from this Council to act as overall Project Manager. The role of the Adempiere council is to: - Support decisions of the leader - Accept contributions - Define the roadmap - Review and approve specifications - Vote for new functionalities - Approve changes to core As the project progresses, more structure began to fall into place where a Project Management Committee takes over many of the admin and technical decision 14

20 making functions within the project. The project will also have a bare bone Foundation to handle financial contribution and corporate level agreements for the public benefit of the bazaar. 3.3 Goals of Adempiere project The goal of the Adempiere project is the creation of a community which develops and supports open source business solution. Such a project will bring about: - A high-quality application suite o Well tested by a critical mass of globally-spread users o An exponentially growing application suite of add-ons and feature enhancements o A maximized adoption rate when there are no barriers to its setup and how-to guides - A viable service-supported product by vendors o Vendors prefer a globally acknowledged package o Vendors prefer to offer up-market value rather than low-level support services o Growing base of users ensure confidence at up-market levels - Maximum developer participation o Non-commercial distraction or patronage from any establishment o Strict contributorship honoring and acceptance into aristocracy o Assignment of admin rights based on meritocracy o Compliance with Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Open Source Initiative (OSI) rules o Visionary and Visible Leadership 3.4 The target market Adempiere was designed for the distribution, retail and service industries. There is a basic functionality for material management and manufacturing planning included, but only to a limited degree. Adempiere is for small and medium enterprises, as well as for individual companies, for distribution chains, outlets of manufacturers, etc. 3.5 Adempiere installation Before starting with the installation, we should have some requirements which are the installation of Java environment and one of Adempiere supported databases 15

21 (postgresql or Oracle). Then we can advance to the next steps: first installing Adempiere server, second creating Adempiere database, and finally completing with Adempiere Server setup. PS: These instructions are platform independent and must be done in every Adempiere installation Installing Adempiere server To install Adempiere server there are some steps to follow: First, we need to extract the Adempiere archive file into a folder, for example: * C:\ for window and this will create the C:\Adempiere folder * /opt or $HOME for Linux and this will create the /opt/adempiere or HOME/Adempiere folder. Second, we open a command line window and go to the folder created in previous step to execute the setup command. The setup script to be run is RUN_setup.bat for windows or RUN_setup.sh for Linux Creating Adempiere database The Adempiere initial database creation is launched by the Adempiere.dmp file, located at $Adempiere_home/data directory. This file contains the seed database for our Adempiere installation. To start, we need just to open a console window, go to this directory, and run this file. ORACLE: We need to run the script RUN_ImportAdempiere (located in directory '/utils',.bat or.sh according to the platform used). We will see information about adempiere.dmp file (such as date creation, size, etc.) POSTGRESQL: Same as the Oracle step above. Note that the database dump file for PostgreSQL is Adempiere_pg.jar and Adempiere_pg.dmp Setting up the Adempiere server This step can be repeated anytime until everything is correct, but we need to make sure that the Application Server is shut down before we start. Otherwise we will get port errors during installation. We need to shut down the Application server by running the script RUN_Server2Stop (.sh or.bat according to the platform used) from ADEMPIERE_HOME/utils. - We run the script RUN_Setup, and then we can see the Adempiere Server Setup window. - We enter or we update the parameters. 16

22 Some Common Issues & Remedies - Application Server & Database Server: are the name, URL or IP of the PC server. - JNP Port = 1099 error: means that a previous service is running; just kill it. - Database Port = 1521 error: can be solved by restarting the database machine. - System & Database Passwords: are those defined when we setup our database. - Mail Server is optional so RUN_Setup can be finished without it. After filling the Adempiere Server Setup window, we press the Test button in order to verify the entered data. Note that until the parameters are verified, we will not be able to save them. When we can see the boxes checked ( ) so the test is done successfully. 17

23 Then we press the Save button. After that we accept the license we will see the following dialog box: 3.6 Overview of some function Adempiere software is too big and full of functions, so we will concentrate only in things we concern. For this reason, we will present in this part an overview of some main Adempiere functionalities which will be used to adapt the billing project with the Adempiere existing infrastructure. 18

24 Adempiere is a CRM/ERP system which means that it can manage all the resources of an enterprise as well at its customers, its providers and all things that are parts of its activity. Adempiere was created around this philosophy and oriented to specific and precise targets Menus The Adempiere menu shows all tasks available for the selected role. Each role has its own. Two principal roles are defined in Adempiere: - SytemAdmin: to do administration and application directory stuff. - ClientAdmin: to run the application a. System Administrator menu The System Administrator is able to: - Create new clients for the business - Create and edit the structure of the application - Edit the menu and the windows as well as the look-and-feel - Edit the tables and fields of the database - Handle the processes and the print formats 19

25 b. Client Administrator menu The client administrator is able to: - Manage the other users of the system by creating their login, roles and more specific configurations like defining access level rights to them. - Operate the application as a user by approving requests or confirmations from lesser users under the workflow and posting to accounts if lesser users are not authorized to do it Business Partner management In Adempiere, a business partner is an entity with whom to transact. There are three different types of business partners: vendors, customers, and employees. The Adempiere concept of the business partner is much more flexible than most applications, since it can be a vendor, a customer, an employee or any combination of the three. This approach also eases access control for self-service functionality and allows regional analysis and shipping optimization. According to the business partner type, we need to choose the related table and fill the appropriate values. 20

26 3.6.3 Product management A product in Adempiere is something that an enterprise can sell and/or purchase (or something we store) and it has a price. The main examples of products are: items, services, resources, and expense types. Items are physical goods to be sold. Services are not restricted in terms of availability whereas resources are restricted. Expenses can be billed, for example, a consultant who incurs some travel expenses which can be invoiced to the customer. Before defining a product, we should follow the product setup workflow instructions. 21

27 3.6.4 Sales order management The sales order is a control document for shipments and invoices. Customer orders and quotations are entered through the sales order window. These are eight target document types, each of which initiates a different process upon completion. The business partner field is the partner who is receiving the order and most of the other fields will default to those set in the business partner window for the chosen partner. The delivery rule field determines the conditions of the conditions under which a shipment is generated for this order and the complete action button reserves stock and initiates any further document processes. 22

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29 Chapter 4 Project overview and realization 4.1 Functional description The project consists on realizing a billing system capable to cover many functions. Basically it receives the CDRs generated by a customer and does the calculation based on a well determined billing policy, and finally generates invoices as well as various reports. For the point of view of an administrator, several customers can coexist having each one a set of subscriptions to different products (Tetra, GSM) with a precise service package. Every service package contains a set of primary services (such as voice call and SMS). Every customer is managed alone and we can define customized billing policies for some special customers with an eventual discount in some cases. The billing policy should be clearly defined in the pricing model table related to each service offered by the company for its customers and must respect many constraints such as price difference between day and night, work days and holidays, etc. 24

30 4.2 Analyses and idea Basing on the Adempiere structure, it is clear that we can integrate each table and each relation into it, so the question is why we are using Adempiere in this case? The answer is with no doubt to use the maximum of its functionalities, such as table organization, hierarchy definition, process calculation and report generation. On the other hand, it will be easier adding some changes in Adempiere source code than modifying it; the former will be certainly a very hard task. So the idea is to respect Adempiere internal architecture to gain its existing functions. The most difficult task is to adapt the project requirements with Adempiere structure since Adempiere was not created for this type of projects but for customer relations management and enterprise resources planning purposes. Now we need to search where to implement the different tables of the project, what are the functionalities needed from Adempiere, and what are the functions we should to add. This is the aim of the next step which consists on controlling the Adempiere infra structure (tables and relations) and trying to find the closest ones to match the project requirements. 25

31 4.3 Possible realization In order to take advantages of Adempiere existing functionalities, the only way to translate the billing project is to use the local tables to represent the project tables. In few words, the services given by the company to their customers will be considered as products and those products are sold using the sales order. Each service provided by the company to its customers is defined in the product table with the appropriate information including the most important one which is the price. The business partner window will be used to represent the company and its customers. Receiving a detailed data file from the billing system related to a specific customer, contains all the CDRs generated in terms of service offered to the customer (for example SMS, voice call, etc.). The data are converted ad a sales order and finally the processing generates the exact invoice. The billing process can be defined daily, weekly, or monthly according to the initial information filled in the customer information. 4.4 Faced problems During the realization of the billing project, we have faced some problems that cannot be achieved using Adempiere. One of those problems is the inability of Adempiere to define a pricing plane for a product with different constraints. For example, one of the project requirements is the billing policy which consists on defining many prices for the same service (SMS, voice call) in different cases like day and night prices, working day and holiday prices, also some special prices for a certain limit for special customers. Normally those conditions should be defined together and according to the customer charges we can assign the appropriate price. In fact this can be done by Adempiere but in a different way. We were obliged to define a price for each constraint. This solution was not optimized but it was the only way to do that. 26

32 Chapter 5 Conclusion and perspectives Our objective was to elaborate a billing project based on Adempiere platform due to its open source characteristic. After studying the possibility of the realization, the solution was not taken because the requirements of the project could not be materialized using a CRM tool. In fact because Adempiere was founded for other purposes and could not achieve this type of projects. After restudying the project specifications the team chose to develop the application using classic Java programming language. 27

33 References - Internet websites: o Adempiere o OpenCRX Documentation o Compiere user manual o OpenCRX quick start 28