Dynamically configurable and extensible rating engine

Details Dynamically configurable and extensible rating engine Dynamically configurable and extensible rating engine

1998-09-04

2001-01-30

Stamber, Eric W. (Department: 2765)

Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co

Automated electrical financial or business practice or...

Accounting

C705S020000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06182054

ABSTRACT:

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
Not applicable
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Many different communications services continue to converge. These communications services include voice, paging, voice mail, E-mail, caller-ID and more. Communication technologies include wire-line voice and data, wireless voice and data, alphanumeric pagers, Internet/Intranet, Specialized Mobil Radio (SMR), electronic commerce (E-Commerce), satellite and cable. The providers of communications services using these technologies are striving to provide a complete service offering, from hardware and physical communications equipment, through customer billing and customer service. The pace of rapid technological advancement requires that these providers can quickly provide new services and technologies as they become available. The pressure to constantly innovate is intense. Unfortunately, most of the billing systems currently used by the providers of integrated communications technology are based on custom, monolithic, proprietary systems used for a specific service. Therefore, a need exists to provide a Billing System with the flexibility to quickly adapt to new services and customer billing requirements.
One method the providers of billing systems use to provide flexibility to accommodate future billing requirements is the use of interchangeable Rating Engines. Turning now to
FIG. 1
, shown is a block diagram of a prior art Rating Engine. The Rating Engine
100
is a software module running on a commercially available hardware platform such as a server. The term “Rating” is used to refer to the process by which charges are assigned to a subscriber based on the particular usage of a service. A Rating Algorithm
114
is coded directly into a Rating Engine. The Rating Engine
100
is driven by Rating Control Data
102
in response to a Rating Event
110
. The term “Rating Event” is more fully described in the paragraph below. Rating Control Data
102
comprises two major components: Information (Subscriber & Service)
106
and Predefined Rate Plans
104
. The Rating Control Data
102
is used to drive the computation that the Rating Engine
100
performs in order to create bills, invoices or customer charges
112
. For example, the Rate Plan can be a wireless telephone monthly subscriber plan with different air time discounts provided based on the number of minutes of monthly usage.
As stated above, the Rating Algorithm is coded (or programmed) directly into the Rating Engine
100
. If a change or update is required to the Rating Engine
100
to modify the Rating Algorithm
114
or to modify the Rating Control Data
102
, the Service Provider needs to re-program, re-compile, re-link and re-test the entire Rating Engine
100
. The requirement to re-program, re-compile, re-link and re-test a Rating Engine
100
adapted to a new communication service environment can be expensive and time consuming. These changes introduce new defects and bugs into the Rating Engine
100
. The defects and bugs are not restricted to the functionality that has changed, but rather the entire Rating Engine
100
is susceptible to new bugs since the entire Rating Engine
100
needs to be re-complied and re-linked. Accordingly, a need exists to provide a method and system to enable the incorporation of new Rating Algorithms
114
without the need to change the basic functionality and structure of the Rating Engine
100
.
The Rating Engine
100
of
FIG. 1
performs a Rating Process to create customer charges, customer bills, customer invoices and other customer output
112
. A Rating Engine
100
is usually triggered to begin a Rating Process using Rating Control Data (Subscriber & Service & Predefined Rate Plans)
102
and applying Rating Algorithm
114
in response to some Rating Event
110
. This Rating Event
110
can be a normal monthly billing cycle for a customer, the need for a customer service representative to review an account, incoming usage from a telephone switch, or any other billing needs or any other Billing System event in response to an operator demand. Alternately, the Rating Event
110
can be scheduled at predetermined regular time intervals.
It is common that in a multi-service environment as new service features are added, new sets of Rating Control Data
102
and Rating Algorithms
114
are required. For example, the service offering text paging may offer billing that is dependent on the number of alphanumeric text characters transmitted per billing period. This billing scheme for text paging is different from the billing scheme for other traditional communication services where the charges are based on the amount of time per billing period the service was used. As new services are offered, the provision of new sets of Rating Control Data
102
and Rating Algorithms
114
to the Rating Engine
100
is required. The providers of billing systems do not accommodate the change in Rating Control Data
102
and Rating Algorithms
114
as services change without the need to re-program, re-compile and re-test the software for the Rating Engine
100
. As previously discussed, this can be expensive and time-consuming. Moreover, providers of communication services many times do not know or have specification for new Rating Plans before the Billing System must be implemented. Therefore, a need exists to provide new sets of Rating Control Data
102
and Rating Algorithms
114
to a Rating Engine
100
to overcome these problems.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Briefly, in accordance with the invention, a method to create billing records in a rating engine comprises the steps of: assembling one or more sets of subscriber information; assembling a rating plan; associating a rating procedure with a rating engine; and calculating billing records with the rating engine through the rating procedure using the rating plan and the subscriber information. In accordance with another aspect of the invention, an apparatus is described to carry out the above process.
The method and apparatus are applicable to any service where a subscriber is billed by the usage of a service or where the subscriber is billed a periodic basis for the service.


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