Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Discount or incentive
Reexamination Certificate
1997-12-31
2001-03-06
Trammell, James P. (Department: 2764)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Discount or incentive
C379S114030
Reexamination Certificate
active
06199047
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for an event rating engine. In particular, the present invention relates to a system for rating varied types of usage events utilizing a rating engine specific to a defined task, the rating knowledge base providing the rating rules for the rating engine and being logically decoupled from the rating engine at the time each usage event is processed.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Conventional rating systems, such as used by telecommunication service providers or cable service providers, can rate specific types of events. For example, a telecommunications service provider, such as AT&T, MCI or SPRINT, utilizes a rating system for rating telephone calls placed on their network tailored specifically for rating telephone calls. A rating system for telecommunications services could not, for example, rate other types of usage events, such as cable services or pay-per-view events. Similarly, a cable service provider rating system is tailored to rating cable service or pay-per-view events and could not, for example, rate telecommunications services. As information processing and delivery systems progress, however, there is a need for the capability of service providers that deliver multiple types of services to customers to have a single system that can provide the required event usage rating capabilities. In addition, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has lowered barriers to competition, thus encouraging cable television and telecommunications providers to enter each other's markets, furthering the need for such a system.
Many existing rating systems are batch-oriented, inflexible, difficult to maintain and based on outdated technology. For example, traditional event rating systems receive a batch of events to be rated and do not run until the batch arrives, thus precluding any real-time capabilities. In such a system, the flow of events is always behind. In addition, these traditional event rating systems are generally programmed systems with few references to rate tables. As a result, these traditional systems have each possible rate programmed into a portion of code and therefore, while efficient with respect to the processing of a particular usage event, these systems are inflexible and any changes to a rating database variable requires reprogramming with the resultant error introduction and debugging procedures, thus making the system difficult to modify.
Some existing rating systems are not limited to batch processing, however, and can rate, for example, call details and telephony features on an as-arrived basis. In these types of rating systems, though, the rating of particular usage events is tied to the rating table or knowledge base during the rating process. For example, when a usage event is to be rated, existing systems may use multiple reference tables that work in conjunction with the rating of the event. Such systems also try to price the event (e.g., apply basic rates, discounts and modifications) on a single pass through the rating engine to avoid accessing a rating database multiple times (e.g., as the same information may be needed multiple times for different purposes) with no consideration given to configuring the flow of event rating processing as being related to the type of event to be rated. While such a system may be more flexible than batch processing systems through the referencing of multiple rate tables, the existing systems are bound to a rating database (e.g., a knowledge base) during the rating process via a program that dictates fixed algorithms that attempt to accomplish all processing actions in a single pass through the rating engine, thus limiting the efficiency of the rating process.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The method and apparatus for an event rating engine according to the present invention provides a rating engine that can be configured for a particular task and is logically decoupled from the rating database when a usage event is rated. The rating engine and method according to an embodiment of the present invention includes, for example, a rating engine, a rating editor, a rating domain server and a rating database. The rating database includes rating rules that include, for example, rating business rules by usage type along with rate tables containing the current rate values. The rating domain server is, for example, an application domain server that provides an object-oriented interface to the rating rules. The rating editor provides, for example, a multi-user graphical user interface (GUI) to the rating domain server. At initialization, the rating engine downloads a set of rating rules from the rating database and interprets the rating rules to form an independent and autonomous rating process that can rate a usage event while being logically decoupled from the rating database during the rating process. Usage events may be provided to the rating engine from, for example, a queue manager, and the resultant rated events can be sent back to the queue manager.
REFERENCES:
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Free long distance—almost. “LAN Times” vol. 14, No. 24, p. 21 (Nov. 24, 1997) pp. 1-2.
Bell Brigham
Bones David
Dimino James
Smith Mitchell W.
Baker & McKenzie
CSG Systems, Inc.
Trammell James P.
Young John Leonard
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