Telephonic communications – Plural exchange network or interconnection – Interexchange signalling
Reexamination Certificate
1998-04-14
2001-03-13
Smith, Creighton (Department: 2642)
Telephonic communications
Plural exchange network or interconnection
Interexchange signalling
C379S221050, C379S207030
Reexamination Certificate
active
06201862
ABSTRACT:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
This application discloses subject matter that is disclosed and which may be claimed in copending applications entitled, “Method for Communicating Between a Service Switching Exchange of a Telecommunication Network and a Service Control Facility”, filed Apr. 9, 1998 (Atty. Docket 902-679); and “Method of Providing a Service to Users of a Telecommunication Network, Service Control Facility, and Processing Node”, filed on even date herewith (Atty. Docket 902-682); both of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
The invention concerns a method for providing at least one service to users of a telecommunication network, a method for provisioning the execution of service logic functions within a service control facility of a telecommunication systems, a service control facility for connecting to one or several service switching exchanges of a telecommunication network and a server node for a service control facility connected to one or several service switching exchanges of a telecommunication network.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Telecommunication services can be provided according to the Intelligent Network Architecture.
A user of a telecommunication network requests a service by dialing the number dedicated to the service. The call with this number is routed through the telecommunication network to a service switching exchange which recognizes this call as a call requesting the service. Then, this service switching exchange communicates via a data network with a service control facility, the so called service control point. This service control point contains a service logic which contains a description of the method that has to be executed to provide the service to the calling user. By a request of the service switching exchange the execution of this method by the service logic is initiated and the requested service is provided to the requesting user.
The service switching exchange is closely linked to a service control facility. The configuration of this link is made through basic proprietary tools provided by the service switching exchange/service control facility pair vendor and do not allow easy and dynamic configurations.
This service logic is realized as a single process handling all calls one after the other. Each of them going through a single queue. Each call is associated with a context allowing the state of the call not to be lost between user interaction. The service is executed through a finite state machine, taking as input the TCAP message and the context of the call.
The disadvantage of this approach is that this architecture of provisioning services is inflexible and does not make good use of the underlying data processing systems.
SUMMARY OF INVENTION
Accordingly, it is a primary objective of the present invention to improve the data processing characteristic of a service control facility.
A first aspect of the invention is a method for providing at least one service to users of a telecommunication network, in which method service calls requesting the execution of the service for an respective one of the users are routed to a service switching exchange of the telecommunication network or are respectively routed to one of several service switching exchanges of the telecommunication network. Also in this method of providing service, a corresponding service request is sent by the respective service switching exchange, that has received the respective service call, to a service control facility. This method is characterized in that the service request is routed to a particular one of a plurality of servers of the service control facility, which are formed on top of an object infrastructure within an object oriented computing environment. This method is also characterized in that the particular server acts as service repository server and determines another one of the plurality of servers that is available and able to execute the control of the service for the respective service call.
A second aspect of the invention is a method for provisioning the execution of service logic functions within a service control facility of a telecommunication system, where service requests, that request the execution of a service logic function, are received by the service control facility from at least one service switching exchange of the telecommunication system. This method is characterized in that the service request is routed to a particular one of a plurality of servers of the service control facility, which are formed on top of an object infrastructure within an object oriented computing environment. This method is also characterized in that the particular server acts as service repository server and determines another one of the plurality of servers that is available and able to execute the respective service request.
A third aspect of the invention is a service control facility for connecting to one or several service switching exchanges of a telecommunication network, where the service control facility contains means for receiving service requests, requesting execution of a service for a user of the telecommunication network from at least one of the service switching exchanges of the telecommunication network. This service control facility is characterized by containing a plurality of servers, which are formed on top of an object infrastructure within an object oriented computing environment, by containing means for routing the service request to a particular one of the service control facility, and by containing the particular server acting as service repository server and determining another one of the plurality of servers that is available and able to execute the respective service request.
A fourth aspect of the invention is a server node for a service control facility connected to one or several service switching exchanges of a telecommunication network, where the server node contains means for receiving service requests, requesting execution of a service for a user of the telecommunication network from at least one of the service switching exchanges of the telecommunication network. This server node is characterized in that the server node is formed on top of an object infrastructure within an object oriented computing environment, and contains means for determining another one of a plurality of server nodes which are formed on top of the object infrastructure within the object oriented computing environment. This server node is also characterized in that it is available and able to execute the respective service request.
The underlying idea of this invention is to implement each service that is offered by the service control facility by one or many servers, which are formed on top of an object infrastructure within an object oriented computing environment and to provide a particular server, a service repository server which determines the one of the servers that has to execute the service for an incoming service request.
Therefore, the service architecture is no longer based on a functional design and technologies like multithreading or multi processing can be applied. Further, an open way to distribute service execution united around one or several service switching exchanges is offered.
With the service repository server distribution is transparent and system configuration is very easily achieved through plug and play. The scalability of the system is ensured and easy to realize through an open interface.
The introduction of CORBA based distribution provides high scalability and IT platform independence. It allows for easy service interworking personalization, distribution and maintainability of the software.
In the approach where the link between the service control facility and the service switching exchange conforms to a OMG CORBA 2.0 specification, the configuration of processing nodes and of server nodes must take advantage of the underlying CORBA platform.
Due to the introduction of an object oriented computing environment and the special object design described above,
Couturier Alban
Mercouroff Nicolas
Alcatel
Smith Creighton
Ware Fressola Van der Sluys & Adolphson LLP
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