Data warehouse system

47/221 04-FGC 101 334 Rev A
Data Warehouse System
FEATURE DESCRIPTION

47/221 04-FGC 101 334 Rev A 2005-05-24 © Ericsson AB 2005
Ericssonwide Internal
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Contents
1 General ................................................................................................... 3
1.1 Purpose & Scope..................................................................................... 3
2 Feature Possibilities.............................................................................. 4
2.1 Examples................................................................................................. 5
3 Technical Description ........................................................................... 6
3.1 Overview.................................................................................................. 6
3.2 Key Characteristics Summary ................................................................. 7
3.3 Architecture ............................................................................................. 8
3.4 Optional Functionality ............................................................................ 10
3.4.1 Usage and Account History ................................................................... 10
3.4.2 Enriched Reporting................................................................................ 11
3.4.3 Enriched Data Exports........................................................................... 13
3.5 Backwards Compatibility ....................................................................... 14
3.6 Migration Aspects .................................................................................. 14
3.6.1 Migration Flow ....................................................................................... 15
3.7 Configuration ......................................................................................... 15
3.8 Performance .......................................................................................... 15
3.9 Scalability .............................................................................................. 15
3.10 Platforms ............................................................................................... 16
3.11 O&M and Maintenance.......................................................................... 16
4 Concepts & Abbreviations.................................................................. 18

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1 General
Data Warehouse System (DWS) collects, enriches and correlates charging
information from multiple network nodes and processes it into reports concerning
usage and account history, subscriber provisioning, finance and audits.
The Ericsson DWS offering is not a Data Ware House as known in the IT world.
Ericsson DWS is focusing on charging related information; it is a pre-integrated
Charging Data Point with enriched & harmonized data. DWS provides a toolbox for
customer care (usage history), data export to other systems (for example CRM) and
data marts for ad hoc reporting.
DWS can add-on to an operator's already available data warehouse solution by
providing it with structured charging information, hence removing the need to
integrate the existing solution with all charging data sources.
1.1 Purpose & Scope
This document provides a description of the commercial feature Data Warehouse
System (DWS).

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2 Feature Possibilities
Different actors, internal and external, require different information. The challenge
for an operator is to be able to answer different questions in different ways,
depending on who is asking and what is the person asking for. Figure 1 displays
some examples of questions put to different departments.
… on an event
that happened 3
months ago
How can we reconcile
our full offering?
How can we reconcile
our full offering?
How can we have
easy access to
reliable data from
Charging System?
How can we have
easy access to
reliable data from
Charging System?
How can we
improve our QoS and
responsiveness?
How can we
improve our QoS and
responsiveness?
...find out how much
extra usage resulting
from the christmas
campaign?
… on an event that
happened a few
minutes ago
Customer Care
Network
Planning
Business
Development
Marketing &
Sales
Revenue
Assurance
Finance
How can a
customer care
department resolve
a customer
inquiry..
... find out how
much we earned on
prepaid last month?
Figure 1 Different actors require different information
DWS delivers validated and reliable charging data to the operator’s Customer Care,
Marketing & Sales, Finance and Auditing, Business Development, Quality
Assurance, Network Planning and Security departments.
The near real-time enriched usage data available through the Usage and Account
History function enables customer care personnel to quickly respond to subscriber
inquiries about usage and costs, and to resolve account balance discrepancies. This
is an important factor for user satisfaction.
Customizable reports provide important information to marketing, business
development, finance, security or other departments enabling the operator to
reconcile provisioning and usage information, meet government regulations on
auditability and traceability of operations, detect internal fraud, etc.
Access to data and reports is provided through a flexible and easy-to-use GUI or
through other customer care clients integrated using the DWS API. The data can
also be exported to external systems for further processing.

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DWS and its data model is pre-integrated and pre-verified with Charging System
and its network nodes delivering charging information, and can hence be up and
running very fast; systems Integration services are only necessary for
customizations of reports and GUI.
Before the installation activities start Ericsson provides the customer with a
questionnaire including classifications, home-zones, region definitions, GUI set up
requirements, parameter preferences, users/passwords, SDP rating tree etc, to
provide the customer with a solution tailor-made for each customer’s specific needs
and requirements.
2.1 Examples
DWS can be used to:
• Provide customer care with clear and understandable usage and account history
information in close to real time.
• Explore revenue and usage trends.
• Explore the success of campaigns (campaign hopping, bonus analysis
long/short term effects etc).
• Explore the success of new services and potential cannibalism effects.
• Gain insight in revenue per location, per on net versus off net traffic,
international traffic etc.
• Provide audits reports.
• Export easy-to-read charging data to other systems.
• Create a dashboard showing the direct results and effects of a new promotion
• Display usage information to subscribers through a portal
• Deliver reports segmented on communities, personal subscriber parameters or
account grouped by the Account Grouping parameter
• And many more…

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3 Technical Description
3.1 Overview
The primary reason for combining data from multiple source applications is the
ability to cross-reference data from the applications. Almost all data in a typical Data
Warehouse is built around the time dimension. Time is the primary filtering criterion
for most activities against the Data Warehouse. An analyst may generate queries for
a given week, month, quarter, or year.
DWS consists of a database with a pre-integrated data model and a choice of at
least one of three optional functions: Usage and Account History, Enriched
Reporting and Enriched Data Exports. DWS is delivered pre-integrated with
Charging System’s data sources.
Data Records (DRs) from Charging System and other network nodes delivering
charging related information - MSC, SCP, CCN, SDP, AIR, and HLR - is pushed in
near real time to DWS. The DRs are normalized, and enriched with more readable
information about the event, for example if it was on-net, off-peak, national or
international, charged duration, bonus-generating, or provided with a discount, and
stored in a harmonized way in the data model.
DR
MSCMSC
SCPSCP
CCNCCN
SDPSDP
AIRAIR
DR
DR
DR
DR
DWS
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Customer Care GUI
Figure 2 pre-integrated DWS
DWS filters, correlates and transforms the collected information before either
generating standard or tailored reports, exporting uniform data to external systems
or make usage data available in near real time in a Customer Care view.
Predefined data marts are available to separate subscriber, life cycle and financial
data. Reports are generated on the data marts, which speeds up performance.

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Warehouse
Financial
Mart
Subscriber
Lifecycle
Mart
Service
Usage
Mart
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Extract
Transform
Load
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
Report
GUI
API
Figure 3 Reports are generated on the data marts but can also be generated on the
whole database
DWS validates and logs the collected data to ensure data integrity. Meta-data
explaining each data item and its derivation ensure smooth extraction and
transformation processes.
DWS has capabilities to enable grouping of subscribers according to a hierarchy
defined by the operator. DWS has possibility to group on:
• Markets - operator organization/reseller etc.
• Home - demographic
• Rate plan - subscription packages
Markets are visible in the standard reports and can be used for example to:
• Map service classes, subscriber area code or cell where a subscriber makes
most of his calls into markets.
• Map subscriber to a rate plan and market.
• Assign a home (state) of a subscriber based on MSISDN information.
3.2 Key Characteristics Summary
• Ready built data model
• Charging System and core network sources pre-integrated and pre-verified

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• Basic web-based (HTML/XML) Customer Care GUI
• MINSAT Customer Care GUI pre-integrated over the DWS API
• Unique process for automated data-enrichment in the warehouse enabling
addition of enriched information to the basic data. For example: automatic
on/off-peak and on/off-net differentiation for different subscriber groups, bonus
identification, charged duration (for example with first 10 seconds for free, and
charge per minute), and (inter)national regions.
• Standard reports running on the enriched data
• Quick installation: DWS can be up and running in less than 4 weeks including
acceptance test. If installation is very well prepared (questionnaire filled in and
delivered on time) the system can even be up and running in less than 5 days.
• Usage and Account History
• Enriched reporting
• Enriched Data Exports
3.3 Architecture
Figure 4 provides an overview of the DWS architecture.
DWS
Data File
API/GUI
output
BO
Reports
Web
server
Data
export
Export
Filter
SunMC
SNMP
agent
SunMC
(h/w alarm)
OSS
(alarms)
Alarm
handler
CDR
CCN
MSC/
SSF
SCF
SDP
DWS
Formatter
Collection
Loader
File
Loader
File
Loader
File
Loader
FileAIR
CDR
CDR
CDR
ERE
Backup
handler
Backup
media (isk)
WAREHOUSE
(all data)
Service
Usage
Mart
Event/Transaction level
Aggregated level
Subs
Lifecycle
Mart
Financial
Mart
Data File
PPS 3.6.2
compatibility
Warehouse
Management
External
System
External
System(s)
Customer
Care
Distribution
Initial sub-data
New tariff trees
SC-TID mapping
Service categorisation
Reverse rating
Tax categorisation
Automated data enrichment
Transformation to DWS data structure
Number normalization
Subscriber
Transactions
ScriptPPAS
Extract
Transform
Load
External
System(s)
Web-based
Reports
HLR
Figure 4 DWS architecture

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DWS collects DRs from the network nodes in real time. Ericsson Rating Engine is
used to enrich data with additional information. DWS formats the information into
loader files that are fed into the database.
The tariff trees from the SDP can be used to easily label the different branches and
recognize the different call/event cases in the CDRs. The labels/conditions are used
for enriching the information. The easy-to-read labels are stored in the warehouse
so that custom reports can be run on for example peak/off-peak, on/off-net, charged
duration, free minutes, premium SMS, et cetera.
This automated process results in reporting possibilities on events, which would
otherwise require very complex, difficult/impossible to maintain logic and
tremendous processing time. Reporting on a campaign was never so easy and
consistent.
Data is extracted from the main database and transformed into data marts.
Reports are generated from the data marts and distributed to a web server or over
the API to an external system or exported as data exports to an external system.
The standard pre-integrated GUI is customizable via optional SI offerings. The GUI
can be enabled to support MVNO, personalized/restricted views with authorization
and dual languages.
The API for GUI integration enables connection of DWS to external customer care
clients. The API can provide similar data as the GUI, except that the information is
returned as parameters in response to a particular query request (and no summary
data is sent). External systems call the API over HTTP, with a set of pre-defined
parameter values, and a pre-defined output format.
MINSAT is pre-integrated using the API to enable view of usage and account history
through the MINSAT Customer Care GUI. The GUI and API support dual languages
with English as the default language and dual currencies to a fixed conversion rate.
Reporting periods are defined in the GUI as either Financial Period parameters or
Date Range parameters (2-24 months).

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*.*
DWS
Enriched data
Enriched reports
Data export
API UAH
Usage and Account History
CDR
CDR
CDR
CDR
Enriched Data export
Enriched Reports
Files
MINSAT
Customer Care
GUI
DBDB
MINSAT
SDP AIR CCN MSC ---
CDR
Figure 5 MINSAT-DWS integration
3.4 Optional Functionality
Three optional functions are available; at least one must be chosen: Usages and
Account History, Enriched Reporting and Enriched Data Exports.
Customized reports can be created with the available basic reports as
templates/examples. Systems Integration Services are also available to assist the
operator in creating customized reports.
Most basic reports have summary pages and detailed report pages. The summary
pages aggregate the results for instance by Service Class and Market.
The Financial Reconciliation Report is used as a summary report for all the financial
reports.
3.4.1 Usage and Account History
The Usage and Account History function includes Call and Service History Report
and Account History Report along with Call and Service History Reporter and
Account History Reporter. Usage and Account History provides a means for
customer care to track the usage and service history of individual subscribers and to
generate reports on call and account history, including life cycle information, for
example temporarily blocked and other life cycle changes.

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Call and service history is by default provided up to three months but can be
extended. The information displayed (for example data and format is configurable.
Response time is short (less than 3 seconds).
DWS
Customer Care GUI
Call &
Service
History
Reporter
Account
History
Reporter
The GUI functions include saving report to file as well as printing report. It is
possible to specify filters on the data fields, sort options (ad hoc) and date range to
control which data to display and how data is displayed.
Account history reports with details on account status, account financial summary,
call and service usage, and provisioning details of an account and its sub-accounts
are available. The provisioning activities include transactions (refills, adjustment,
credit clearance etc). This information is updated daily and information in the reports
hence concerns time up to the previous day.
The report fields contain information such as date, B-number, location, duration and
total cost, adjustment amount, and replenish (refill) amount.
3.4.2 Enriched Reporting
The Enriched Reporting function provides financial and audits reports. To enhance
performance DWS aggregates data into subject based data marts, that is
specialized tailor-made data warehouses, which manage information for a single
business department, such as Finance, Marketing, Audit, etc.
The Business Objects software (BO) is used for report generation on the data marts.
BO provides an intuitive, user-friendly interface, a business-intelligent, semantic
layer (“universe”) that maps to data in the database, using everyday terms from the
business environment. This way the user can select exactly the data of interest,
using well-known business terminology, to create ad-hoc reports. The Business
Objects Designer is used when creating the universes.

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DWS
Customer Care GUI
Usage
Report
Subscriber
Reconciliation
Report
Bonus
Report
Figure 6 Enriched Reporting
Reports can be generated ad hoc or scheduled.
Data marts for subscriber (usage), life cycle and financial data are predefined and a
number of standard reports are available. Customized reports and ad-hoc reports
can be developed as Ericsson Systems Integration services.
Both summary pages and detailed pages of the reports can be viewed from the GUI.
Financial Period reports provide an aggregation of information at the month end,
and can be generated for up to 24 months in the past.
Reports can be segmented based on Community Id and on service offerings
parameter.
Usage and Account History has two reports:
• Call and Service History Report (available through the GUI, in XML and HTML
format. Data is also available over the API)
• Account History Report (available through GUI, in XML and HTML format. Data
also available over API)
The following financial reports are available:
• Activations Report - to identify activations of new accounts
• Bonus Report: showing bonuses awarded to accounts
• Account Balance Report – balance of accounts based on usage and
provisioning
• Replenished Accounts – refills and payments per MSISDN. A summary of refill
transactions by voucher card type is also provided.
• Adjustments Report – customer care account adjustments applied to each
MSISDN, and the identity of the customer care operators who made the

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adjustments grouped by adjustment code. A summary report is available per
"operator", showing all his/her adjustments in a selected period.
• Expired Accounts Report – accounts expired in a financial period and their
balance to be forfeited, if any, sorted by region and MSISDN.
• Cleared Credits Report - credit cleared in a financial period and the credit
amount, for Active and Expired Accounts.
• Usage Based Promotion Credits - summary of real-time promotions (total
amount and promotion value) per market and service type.
• Financial Reconciliation Report - summary report for financial information per
market (provisioning and usage activities of all accounts from one financial
period to the next).
The following audit reports are available:
• Active Accounts in Administration System vs. Active Accounts in HLR - verifies
that provisioning is correctly performed in HLR and admin system. The report
displays accounts active in admin but not active in the HLR, accounts active in
HLR but not in admin and active subscribers in admin for which there is no
corresponding subscriber defined in the HLR.
• Monthly reconciliation - compares the status at the end of the last financial
period with the number of activations/deactivations during the new period and
comparing this with the reported end number of the new period.
3.4.3 Enriched Data Exports
The Enriched Data Exports function enables enriched and harmonized data to be
exported from DWS to an external system in ASCII file format. The files are
exported on daily, weekly or monthly basis, according to the operator’s
requirements.
DWS
External System
Figure 7 Enriched data exports
DWS collects and correlates the data and verifies it for integrity, before exporting it
over FTP.

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Data is sorted in data marts the same way as when it is handled within DWS, to
enable a smooth export to different systems, handling Call and Service Data
(Usage), Subscriber Life Cycle Data (Subscriber Status) or Financial Transactions
(Refills, Bonuses, Promotions etc)
Systems Integration services are mandatory for integration towards the external
systems.
3.5 Backwards Compatibility
DWS 4.0 is backwards compatible with PrePaid System 3.6.2 /Charging System
1.6.2 and Charging System 3.0
3.6 Migration Aspects
Customers migrating from DWS 3.6.2 to DWS 4.0 will experience many enhanced
functions:
• Account history is available in near real time instead of once per day.
• Enhanced performance due to the use of data marts
• Enhanced usability through improved GUI with a modernized look and feel.
• Improved logging capabilities
• Number analysis
• Quicker Business Objects based reports: from maximum 5 minutes to less than
30 seconds
• Extended Diameter CDR support - mapping of Diameter CDR parameters to
service types is configurable and documented and it is possible to report and
export on Diameter based services.
• Support of dual currencies to a fixed rate. The currency to use for all presented
monetary data as well as the symbol for each currency are configurable.
• Storage of events indicating denied access to service.
• Support for all types of CCN CDRs.
• Uniform (for both Call and Account data) retention period.
• Support of Number Plan Change batch file – capability to connect the new
MSISDN to an existing account and to mark the old MSISDN as no longer used.
• Advanced Systems Integration offering

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3.6.1 Migration Flow
When migrating from DWS 3.6.2 the data is migrated into the DWS 4.0 data model.
As this migration takes some time, it is recommended to migrate the most urgent
data first. The release provides the means to restore DWS-archive data after the
migration. The DWS migration is preferably performed some time before the
upgrade to Charging System 3.0, as DWS 4.0 is backwards compatible with PrePaid
System 3.6.2/Charging System 1.6.2. The actual data migration is performed in
several steps. During the data migration the system continues to work as a DWS
3.6.2 system.
3.7 Configuration
Operator-specific reference information is required to configure DWS. This would
include details such as Financial Period starting date and length, peak/off peak
hours, definition of regions, markets, services, etc. A web interface gives authorized
users access to DWS configuration parameters. Validation of a parameter value is
done before it can be modified. Access control is imposed.
3.8 Performance
DWS performance depends on:
• Network speed in delivering call and service data to DWS and the amount of
data to process.
• Number of concurrent users
• Reporting direct on the data warehouse database instead of on the data marts
affects performance.
GUI response times for customer care are less than three seconds for 50 concurrent
users (users logged on to a networked application, which are placing queries and
generating reports at a particular instant in time) on a 100 Mbps LAN.
Financial Reports and Audit Report response time varies with the size of the report
and its complexity but in average response time is less than 30 seconds.
DWS has no impact on Charging System performance.
3.9 Scalability
DWS can be dimensioned to suit subscriber bases ranging from tens of thousands
up to the Charging System limit of 32 million subscribers. The pre-packaged
configurations supports up to 15 million subscribers and market specific
configurations are provided for operators with subscriber bases exceeding 15 million
subscribers.

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The small HW configuration supports up to approximately 2 million subscribers, the
medium configuration supports up to 5 million subscribers and the large
configuration up to approximately 15 million subscribers.
SunFire E2900 is used in all configurations. StoreEdge 6130 is used for storage.
3.10 Platforms
• SunFire E2900, 4-12 dual CPU
• StoreEdge 6130 FC Array
• Solaris 9
• Oracle 10g
• Veritas Storage Foundation 4.0
• Business Objects 6.5.1
• SunMC
3.11 O&M and Maintenance
Maintenance reports provide information on the volume, quality, and integrity of
DWS data and configuration.
Administrators access maintenance reports from the web-based DWS System
Maintenance page. A reference page provides a list of the available maintenance
reports and their status.
Each report is identified by its name, status (ready, locked, failed), last refresh start,
and last refresh end. The reports displays – on a daily basis – for example the
number of DRs concerning various traffic cases, DRs with numbers that could not
be resolved in the number analysis part of the processing of the DRs, data about
calls for which the DRs from the MSC and the DRs from the SCP do not match and
a DWS usage load report.
Critical errors in hardware, software, and other applications are sent to OSS Alarm
Monitoring system in TXF alarm format. Details of the data loading errors are stored
in the log file of the faulty session. DWS also provides input to OSS for heartbeat
monitoring (OSS detecting the presence of DWS).
DWS security features are based on user identification profiles, as they apply within
UNIX, Oracle, and the Business Objects application. The Account and Usage
History Reports can be made available over secure intranet.
Backup is provided on disks using RAID 5 to optimize data storage. It is not
necessary to stop or restrict access to the database to perform backup.

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A Business Objects software license for up to 50 named users is included in the
basic offering.

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4 Concepts & Abbreviations
Abbreviation Explanation
API Application Programming Interface
BO Business Objects (software)
CCB Customer Care and Billing
CCN Charging Control Node
CDR Call Detail Record
DR Detail Record
DWS Data Warehouse System
FTP File Transfer Protocol
GUI Graphical User Interface
HLR Home Location Register
HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol
ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network
(standards)
LAN Local Area Network
MSC Mobile Switching Center
MSISDN Mobile Station ISDN Number (subscriber
number)
MVNO Mobile Virtual Network Operator
OSS Operation and Support System
PPAS PrePaid Administration System
SCP Service Control Point
SDP Service Data Point
SI Systems Integration
TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet
Protocol
TXF Text File Alarm (format)
USSD Unstructured Supplementary Service Data

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