Versant in Telecommunications

Telecommunications service providers and equipment vendors today are confronting significant challenges as they address the multitude of changes sweeping their industry. Networks are increasing in size and complexity as demand pressures grow and as new technologies, from cellular telephones and fiber optics to multimedia, computers and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), converge on the networks. And as the competitive environment intensifies, it becomes increasingly important for service providers and equipment vendors to be able to react to changes quickly and effectively while maintaining the highest levels of performance and reliability.

One of the most important ingredients in achieving these goals is the ability to efficiently model, manage and optimize the next generation of telecommunications equipment and services. Telecommunications networks are among the most demanding environments in terms of performance and reliability, and as a result place enormous demands on the database management systems at the hearts of most telecommunications equipment and services. The next generation of telecommunications applications requires a new generation of database technology -- object-oriented technology. A technology that draws on the strengths of prior-generation DBMS technology and blends them with the latest advances. A DBMS designed from the ground up for the highest performance and reliability in concurrent, highly distributed, multi-platform environments with extremely large data storage requirements.

The Versant Object Database Management System is such a product. Versant is a fourth-generation DBMS combining the direct modeling of complex, graph-structured data with the power of today's leading object programming languages. From its inception, Versant has been architected to achieve the highest levels of performance and reliability in concurrent, highly distributed, multi-platform environments, and to maintain them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As a result, the Versant ODBMS allows telecommunications service providers and equipment vendors to solve problems they have been unable to solve using older storage technologies.

The Versant ODBMS is being used today in the following telecommunications applications, which will be discussed later int his paper:

Because of the strength of the Versant architecture, its ability to reliably handle complex data structures and relationships in a concurrent, highly distributed environment, more than 30 telecommunications companies worldwide are currently solving their network management and data storage problems with the Versant ODBMS as their database. Among these, the Versant ODBMS is being used today by three of the top six telephone companies and by four of the top eight switch manufacturers. The Versant ODBMS not only enables telecommunications companies to develop the applications they need for increased revenues, but lets them achieve their goals in the shortest time possible.

The Versant Object Database Management System

Application developers historically have turned to one of two methods to store information: flat files or relational database management systems. While flat files can store arbitrarily complex data, they lack the concurrency, distribution and integrity of traditional database management systems. Although relational systems do offer the traditional DBMS benefits, their table-oriented data model is unable to adequately model complex data and relationships, and is unable to store programmatic objects in their native form. In fact, second-generation CODASYL DBMS technology, which required all data to be modeled strictly as networks, is easier to use than the relational DBMS technology that replaced it for modeling network- or graph-structured data.

Object-oriented database management systems like Versant offer the best of both worlds. They provide the flexibility to model and store arbitrarily complex, graph-structured data objects and the power of true database management systems. In fact, because of the difficulty of modeling networks in non-object-oriented systems, many telecommunications standards are themselves defined in object-oriented terms. For instance, ISO standards for network management -- including the Guidelines for the Definition of Managed Objects (GDMO) and the Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP) -- are defined in object-oriented terms. What's more, many Bellcore technical reference standards ("TR" publications), such as the TR-303 technical reference for remote digital loop carriers, are defined in object-oriented terms. Versant enables these standards to be modeled directly.

Industry-standard benchmarks clearly demonstrate that all object databases are faster than even the fastest relational databases when managing complex data structures. But unlike other object-oriented database systems, Versant offers object-level granularity, transparent data distribution network wide, online addition of data volumes, online schema evolution and online compaction and relocation of objects. Versant's proven "24 by 7" architecture delivers outstanding performance in concurrent, highly distributed, multi-platform, zero-downtime telecommunications environments for a wide range of applications with complex data types and complex relationships.

Performance for High-Availability Environments

Versant is extremely well suited to telecommunications applications because of its inherent performance and high-availability capabilities, capabilities not found in any other object database.

Because telecommunications applications are highly concurrent and "bursty" in nature, minimizing concurrency conflicts is critical to their success. Versant's concurrency control mechanism uses locking at the individual object level, which maximizes sharing and delivers the best possible throughput. Other object databases lock data at the page or container level, preventing other processes from accessing any objects on that page or in the container.

Transparent data distribution makes it easier to build distributed applications because it eliminates the need to track the physical location of database objects in the network. Versant achieves transparent data distribution with logical object identifiers (LOIDs), network-wide, unique immutable object identifiers automatically assigned to every object. Versant objects on one node can transparently reference objects on other nodes, objects can migrate from one node to another transparently without breaking existing application code or requiring changes to class or pointer definitions, and Versant's industry-standard two-phase commit protocol ensures data integrity for distributed transactions.

Versant maintains maximum performance over time by dynamically redistributing objects. Versant's LOIDs enable it to maintain physical storage clustering and locality of reference, and provide load balancing, by moving objects efficiently as needed. Disk I/O is minimized, giving the best possible performance. The performance of other databases, without Versant's sophisticated storage management, degrades over time, and the database must be taken off line regularly to redistribute the objects to bring performance levels back up, a process that is unacceptable in the demanding world of telecommunications.

In any system, switch configurations change, networks change and OSSs change, making the ability of the database schema to change gracefully and without disrupting service an important consideration. Versant's advanced "lazy update" schema evolution overcomes the limitations of earlier technologies by automatically maintaining versions of the schema object for a class. Each instance is then migrated from the old to the new schema on demand (i.e., only when referenced). Versant's lazy updates may be performed on-line, a critical factor in a high-availability telecommunications environment, and they amortize the cost of migrating all the instances of a class across a long period of time.

Versant's LOID-based architecture also supports exceptionally large databases. While some relational databases have architectural limits of eight to ten million rows per table, Versant supports 2.81 x 10E14 objects (2.81 tera-objects) per database, and over 65,000 databases per network. Versant also makes very large database support practical with an object archival mechanism that allows access to archived objects stored on either secondary or tertiary storage devices.

Versant supports checkin and checkout mechanisms to insulate applications from network failures, and an online incremental backup utility. Versant has also developed a replication and hot-standby capability. Together, these capabilities allow Versant to support a number of mission-critical "24 by 7" telecommunications applications.

Versant for Remote Digital Terminals

The market for next-generation digital loop carriers is exploding as the competitive environment intensifies, especially in the United States. Deregulation and the emergence of digital services such as video and ATM is creating unprecedented opportunities not only for local telephone companies and interexchange carriers, but has attracted large cable television companies as well. A key ingredient in developing the infrastructure is the digital loop carrier, the most efficient method of extending the reach of the central office switch. These remote digital terminals make possible low-cost subscriber access to an increasing number of digitally-based services.

Remote digital terminals are highly concurrent environments. Supervisory systems and multiple OSSs are accessing a large number of objects at the same time. Versant's object-level granularity provides maximum performance in such a highly concurrent environment as this. Versant's network-wide data distribution allows multiple supervisory systems to exchange objects between groups of remote digital terminals transparently across the network as they need updated information. And Versant's 24 by 7 capabilities, including on-line addition of data volumes and on-line data volume compaction for reduced overhead, are built into its architecture to provide sustained performance over time.

Versant is playing a key role in helping deliver the next-generation digital loop carriers. Versant is being used within these network elements to support the TR-303 information model by implementing the management information base (MIB), and to provide a supervisory system for managing the external OSS interface. The TR-303 information model describes the remote digital terminal's management functions in terms of classes, objects, attributes and methods, making this a natural fit for the Versant object-oriented database.

Using Versant, the TR-303 information model can be placed directly into the database without having to write any of the complex interface code that would be necessary with a different information storage technology. The information is essentially converted to C++ header files, enabling it to be stored directly in the database.

As an adjunct to a central office switch, Versant is being used to perform mediation functions between older OSSs and new technology remote digital terminals. Switch management functions arriving at the central office switch from external OSSs for the remote digital terminal are parsed based on the MIB stored in Versant, which converts them to the CMIP protocol required by the terminal. The management commands are then passed on to the terminal where they are acted upon.

ATM Switch Management

The downsizing and decentralization of businesses combined with the rapid adoption of local area networks is creating great demand for a method of linking physically disparate networks. Add to this the recent interests in desktop video conferencing and other multimedia applications, and the need for high-speed isochronous data transport over wide areas becomes critical. Asynchronous transfer mode uniquely satisfies this need, and as a result, the development of ATM networks and market for ATM switches is growing rapidly.

ATM switches are highly concurrent environments. There may be as many as 200,000 to 400,000 objects in the cache with 200 to 1000 concurrent users. Only Versant, with its object-level granularity, has the performance to provide the level of concurrency needed for this type of application. As a result, Versant is finding application in both inter- and intra-switch management to manage the switch itself as well as a group of switches, and is also providing an OSS mediation function to enable these new technology switches to be managed by older technology OSSs (like TL-1), similar to the mediation function offered by Versant in the central office switch for managing remote digital terminals.

Versant reduces overhead and provides the sustained performance and flexible switch configuration updates -- configuring the class hierarchy of the MIB without having to take the database off-line -- required for 24 by 7 availability. In actual applications, Versant has consistently exceeded customer performance expectations.

Today, Versant is being employed in the Fujitsu FETEX-150 ATM switch as the repository for the management information base, or MIB, the complete collection of objects that model the switch and its behavior. This 750-megabyte to 1-gigabyte database contains all the managed objects as well as support objects, the objects that actually manage the operation of the switch. They manage the network management functions, the performance analysis and the set-up and tear-down of permanent virtual circuits.

In the Fujitsu switch, Versant is running on the operations management processor, one of several processors contained within the switch, where it is responsible for the network management and configuration of the switch. For example, Versant stores the call routing tables for subsequent downloading into the switch's call processors, which in turn are responsible for call routing and the set-up and tear-down of the virtual circuits.

Versant is also used to store all the information on how to manage the switch when presented with commands from external OSSs. When the Fujitsu ATM switch receives a network management request from a remote OSS, an OSI stack first converts the message from the format of the external OSS to a CMIP protocol message. This CMIP protocol message then goes into an object request broker or object arbitrator that determines the type of management function to perform, loads the appropriate top-level objects for the OSI management so the message can be sent to and understood by the support or managed object actually doing the work of communicating to the switch.

Services Database, Adjuncts and Intelligent Peripherals

Telecommunications providers today are confronting a services dilemma. On the one hand, they are being pressured by their customers to rapidly create and deploy a variety of new services, such as origin routing, personal numbers or voice-activated phone cards, while on the other hand, the cost of implementing a full advanced intelligent network to support these services is prohibitive. The telephone companies are discovering they don't have to pay $10 million for a new service control point (SCP) or service switching point (SSP) and the associated software, plus the substantial annual software maintenance fees. Instead, they can achieve very similar functionality using existing switches at a fraction of the cost by attaching a high-technology, low-cost, Unix-based processor to the network and using Versant to create a services database, intelligent peripheral or adjunct. Services can be implemented quickly, and with minimal network infrastructure modification.

Versant is being used as the main database for services databases, adjuncts and intelligent peripherals because of their need for high-speed, complex associative look-up and access to data in a distributed environment. Some services databases are read-only and some are read-mostly/write sometimes, while those with higher levels of interaction are read/write. In all cases, services databases demand a high level of concurrency because they may be handling hundreds of calls each second, and require quick remote access to the data without contention.

Versant's object-level granularity provides maximum performance in a highly concurrent distributed environment like this. Versant also minimizes network traffic by balancing compute resources between client and server, processing queries at the server where they are closest to the data and returning only the qualified objects to the client. Versant also provides efficient dual object and page caching to reduce network traffic by taking advantage of client storage capacity to hold objects until the pertinent transaction commits. And Versant's 24 by 7 capabilities, including on-line addition of data volumes and on-line data volume compaction for reduced overhead, keep services database up and running 24 hours a day, seven days a week by allow maintenance to be performed without taking the database down.

Telecom Australia is using Versant in its services database, which it is now marketing internationally as SDB. SDB provides all the key features of an intelligent network at a greatly reduced cost. Originally offering an origin-routing service called "One3 Service" -- time- and day-routing, call distribution and diversion on busy/congestion, as well as origin routing -- Telecom Australia has added many additional services, including Freephone 800 service, Freecall One3 and Customer Fault Reporting.

Acting as a normal signaling point in the CCS7 network, SDB communication employs ordinary CCS7 signaling for call control. Service features are added by intercepting and controlling the signaling for a call and accessing the Versant database as required for service information. The speech path of a call requiring database facilities is "parked" on the outgoing side of a loop route while the signaling is directed to the database via the CCS7 network. When the call control messages are returned to the access exchange after manipulation by the database, the parked call is taken from the incoming side of the loop route and switched to its final destination. The loop routes can be distributed around the switching network to avoid concentrating traffic on a particular central office switch, and any digital exchange connected to the CCS7 network can become an access exchange by the creation of a loop route.

Head Office Collector

As telephone companies add new services -- cellular services, ATM services, personal numbers, voice messaging, calling cards, etc. -- and build their advanced intelligent networks (AIN), the mundane tasks of accounting and billing have presented new and complex challenges. Customers are demanding new billing services, such as fraud protection, credit limit analysis, daily billing information and consolidated billing. In addition, new requirements such as TR-1343 automatic message accounting (AMA) call for very complex data structures and real-time, on-line billing modification. These, in turn, are creating the need for a new technology for real-time data acquisition and billing systems.

Versant is helping AMA become a reality by enabling the implementation of real-time data filtering, scoping and discrimination in support of AMA data server and data processing and management system functionality. The AMA (TR-1343) data model is specified in object-oriented terms, making its implementation a perfect fit for an object database, and Versant is the only object database capable of providing the performance and reliability required by the high concurrency, high-availability demands of AMA.

Versant's object-level granularity delivers maximum performance in highly concurrent, distributed environments, and it's broad platform support allows service providers to tune their costs by enabling them to buy just the amount of processing power they need for a particular application. Its on-line storage management features -- volume addition, data compaction, object relocation -- keep up-time to a maximum for true 24 by 7 availability.

Core data server and data processing and management functions of the AMA system are being built on Versant today. Versant makes it easy to implement all the standardized accounting, configuration, fault, performance, security and other supporting objects that perform the data server and DPMS functions. First, as AMA records or billing data generated by cellular switches, ATM switches and other network elements are received by the data server using appropriate protocols, the data server converts them into standardized objects and passes them upstream to the DPMS. The DPMS, in turn performs post processing and analysis necessary for the various value-added services mentioned above. The processed information is then sent to the centralized billing system for printing or to individual customer network management systems for real-time billing histories.

Operations Support Systems

Telephone companies today are burdened with a huge investment in legacy operations support systems, systems that for years have provided the centralized alarm, configuration, performance, accounting and security management functions for older technology network elements, but which are unable to directly manage the RDTs, cellular switches, ATM switches, intelligent peripherals and other new-technology network elements constantly being added. They need some way to use their existing OSSs to control these newer network elements.

Versant is being used to augment existing OSS architectures by mediating the differences between their older interfaces and the new-technology network elements. Versant provides a way to store data from the existing OSSs using its native data model and convert it to messages appropriate for managing new-technology network elements. For example, using Versant, classes can be defined to model a structured ASCII-based control language such as TL-1. As TL-1 messages arrive, they are stored in these TL-1 classes as objects. Methods on these TL-1 objects can create new objects converting this data into CMIP messages that can be sent to a network element like an RDT.

In addition to its use in the mediation function, Versant is being used to develop an entire operations support system for Hughes/Claircom as part of its new airborne digital telephone service, AirOne. The Versant object database is being used to support all fault, configuration, performance and accounting management functions (security is already built into the system at a higher level) for a growing system that today comprises 105 ground stations across the U.S. Each ground station, controlled by a Sun workstation running Versant, creates billing records upon call initiation and call termination, and stores these records in the Versant database. Since a call may span two or more ground stations as the plane travels overhead, the start and stop billing records for any call may reside on separate databases. Versant's transparent data distribution handles all aspects of transferring the data 10 to 15 times an hour to the central system-wide monitoring station, where all the billing records are reconciled and the actual charges are generated. Versant performs all connection set-up and tear-down, and provides all session management. Check-in and check-out features ensure that all the data gets across the line.

Versant simultaneously stores all fault records generated by the ground station equipment, constantly monitors the rate at which they are generated and compares the rate to a predetermined threshold. Should the fault rate exceed the threshold, an on-demand, real-time alarm is generated and transmitted to the central monitoring station where it can be acted upon. Otherwise, fault data is transmitted along with the billing data at regular intervals. In addition, configuration data from the central system-wide monitoring station is transmitted back to individual ground stations, as needed, while it continues operating.

Customer Network Management

More and more, large businesses utilizing leased lines from their local exchange carrier or interexchange carrier for their private voice and data networks are demanding control over these networks. They want to be able to generate and track their own service order requests, reconfigure and provision their leased lines, and get reports on billing, network traffic and transport parameters without having to pick up a phone, call the phone company and request that the changes be made or reports be generated. Customer network management allows businesses to gain this control.

Versant is providing the technology required by a major interexchange carrier to deliver customer network management for their ATM network customers. The system gives customers control over a network employing several different types of ATM switches, customer premises interfaces and routers from a number of different vendors, with much of the data describing these devices stored in MIBs. Obtaining billing information, current configuration information, fault and performance information can be very challenging in such a heterogeneous environment, where each device requires a specific protocol for communications and control. Versant can support standard network management MIBs and hide the details of communications protocols and OSS languages to control and monitor these devices.

Versant is providing this interexchange carrier with a single, unified view of all its network equipment. As a result, it can generate value-added applications more quickly because its programmers don't have to be concerned that, for example, one device communicates via TL-1 over an X.25 network while another uses CMIP over a T-1 link. It's all hidden from the programmers through the encapsulation of these details in the objects, enabling all devices to be accessed and interrogated in the same manner.

Versant's support for 24 by 7 availability ensures that these customer network management systems will meet the reliability standards telecommunications companies demand. Its on-line data volume compaction for reduced overhead and sustained performance, as well as on-line schema evolution mean that routine maintenance procedures can be performed without taking the system off-line. In addition, Versant's geographic replication capabilities enable backup data to be stored at a secure site for emergency situations.

Versant -- The Right Choice for Telecommunications

Versant is at work today in telecommunications. Whether it's managing RDTs or ATM switches, enabling services databases, supporting head office collectors, driving OSSs or providing customer network management, only Versant is able to deliver the performance, reliability and flexible data modeling required by the next generation of telecommunications applications. From its beginnings, Versant has been architected for and deployed in high-availability, 24 by 7 environments, and is in use today by companies around the world developing advanced telecommunications equipment and services. Versant is committed to developing and maintaining applications with its partners and to their long-term success in meeting the challenges of the future.

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