Oracle® Communications Billing and

Revenue Management
Glossary

Release 12.0
E51013-02
May 2021
Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management Glossary, Release 12.0

E51013-02

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Contents
Preface
Audience iv
Documentation Accessibility iv

Glossary

iii
 Preface

Preface
This guide contains the glossary for Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue
Management (BRM).

Audience
This guide is intended for all BRM users.

Documentation Accessibility
For information about Oracle's commitment to accessibility, visit the
Oracle Accessibility Program website at http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?
ctx=acc&id=docacc.

Access to Oracle Support

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if you are hearing impaired.

iv
Glossary

A number
The originating telephone number.

AAC
See automatic account creation.

access code
See security code.

access group
Also called access control list (ACL). A group that enables one or more users to
perform customer management tasks on a particular account hierarchy.

An access group can contain only one account hierarchy. Users who do not belong to
a given access group cannot manage customer accounts and other data associated
with that access group's account hierarchy.

access privileges
A permission that enables a user to access an account and other data in an account
hierarchy. You set up access privileges by creating an access group in the Access
Privileges application.

Access Privileges
The application you use to assign a customer service representative (CSR) or other
personnel permission to work with an account or account group.

account
A record of a customer's information, including name and address, billing day of
month, and payment method.

Account information is stored in the BRM database in an /account object.

Glossary-1
 Glossary

account balance
See balance.

account currency
The currency used by a customer. Each balance impact is recorded in the customer's
account currency, and the customer pays a bill by using their account currency. The
account currency can be different from the system currency.

account group
An account collection linked for organizational purposes, reporting, sharing, or topping
up. There are several types of account groups:

• Hierarchies contain a parent account and any number of a child accountand other
account hierarchies. Although an account hierarchy is a /group/billing object,
billing is not based on account hierarchies; it is based on bill unit hierarchies.
Account hierarchies are created for the following reasons:

– Solely to display relationships between one account and another. In such

cases, if the child account has a charge, the parent account pays none of it.

– To provide a mechanism that custom reports can use to identify a related

account and analyze the relationships.

– To provide the organizational structure for rolling charges of child accounts up

to the parent account during billing.

See also bill unit hierarchy.

• Charge and discount sharing groups consist of a sharing group owner account
and one member account or more. Sharing groups are created so that an owner
can share a charge and discount with participating member accounts.

• Sponsored top-up groups contain one sponsored top-up group owner account
and one member account or more. They are created so that the owner account
can top up each member's account account balance.

account hierarchy
See account group.

account number
A unique number that identifies a customer's account in the database. The default
account number format begins with the database number and is followed by one or
more digits, for example, 0.0.0.1-9310.

Glossary-2
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account password
A customer password that is not used for accessing a service (for example, a
password to a Web page).

account status
An account attribute that determines the level of activity that a customer can perform.
There are three types of status:

• Active: The customer can perform normal account and service activity.

• Inactive: The customer is restricted from using any service, usually because the
customer exceeded a credit limit or did not pay a bill. Depending on how your
system is configured, the customer might be able to use Web account-access
pages. inactive status implies that the customer will use the account again.

• Closed: The customer has no access to services and typically, cannot use Web-
access pages. A closed status implies that the customer will not use the account
again.

See also service status.

accounting
A process that gathers information about a customer session, such as the duration
of a session, the time of day the session occurred, and the amount of data sent or
received during the session. ECE uses accounting data to determine how much to
charge customers for the service they use.

accounting cycle
A one-month period during which each event is recorded and the charge is calculated
but not billed. Charges are recorded in the customer's balance and in each bill unit.
See also billing cycle.

accounting type
The way customers are billed and how payments are applied to a bill. BRM supports
two accounting types:

• With open item accounting, a customer is billed only for charges from each bill
item in the current bill. If a customer does not pay a bill, the next bill does not
include charges for the bill that the customer did not pay.

By default, if a customer account with open item accounting has an underpayment,

the payment must be allocated manually.

• With balance forward accounting, a customer's bill includes all the charges that a
customer owes, including those from a previous billing cycle. If a customer does
not pay a bill, the next bill includes charges from the previous bill.

Glossary-3
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By default, if a customer account with balance forward accounting has an

underpayment, the payment is automatically allocated to the oldest bill.

account default balance group

The balance group that is automatically created for an account. This balance group
tracks balances for each service owned by the account. You can add one service
balance group or more to track balances for particular services.

accounts receivable (A/R)

A current asset representing money owed to a company for a service performed or
merchandise sold. Also, an accounting system that tracks this information.

ACL
Access Control List. See access group.

action owner
A classification for a person or group in your company assigned to one suspended
payment or more. Action owners are specified though an action owner code and
assigned through Billing Care.

action owner code

An identification number that indicates the action owner responsible for correcting a
suspended payment. When payment analysts review suspended payments, they can
select an action owner code for each suspended payment.

active status
The normal status for an account or service. The customer can perform normal
account and service activity.

See also inactive status and closed status.

activity
An event that occurs at a single point of time, such as an address or password
change. An activity event has no duration.

add-on bundle
A bundle that can be purchased only by a customer who already has an account.

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add-on package
A package that can be purchased only by a customer who already has an account.

adjustment
A transaction that credits or debits a bill item by changing the amount due for a bill or
by changing the noncurrency balances.

adjustment event
When rerating, if the original event being rerated has already been billed, the GL has
already been posted, or both, an adjustment event gets recorded. This adjustment
event generates a balance in the next bill for the difference in the amount.

administrative event
An event generated by changes to the information of an account, such as a password
or name change.

advice of charge (AoC)

A supplementary service that informs customers about the cost of a requested service
in monetary or nonmonetary format.

advice of promotion (AoP)

An online charging function by which you can inform customers of a possible
promotion if they request a service at a future time; for example, when a call would
charge less in an off-peak time period.

aged money
accounts receivable (A/R) that has not been paid. It is usually grouped in a time
period, for example, 30-day, 60-day, or 90-day. At some point your company might
conclude that they are never going to get paid and decide to write off A/R , that is,
remove it from the books as an asset.

aggregation counter
A noncurrency account balance used by discounting to track subscribers' total usage
charge or units used (such as minutes or bytes) for the cycle. Aggregation counters
are incremented when subscribers use a service. A discount (typically a billing-time
discount) is then applied based on the aggregated balance.

Glossary-5
 Glossary

aging bucket
Time-based category into which overdue balances are divided for reporting in
Collections Manager. For example, overdue balances can be divided into 30-, 60-,
and 90-day aging buckets.

allocate
To distribute the amount of a payment or adjustment between each bill in the
customer's account and reduce the amount the customer owes. You can use Billing
Care to allocate payments and adjustments.

answer_b
A program that simulates the Paymentech credit card processing service. When
setting up credit card payments, use answer_b for testing batch processing.

answer_s
A program that simulates the Paymentech credit card processing service. When
setting up credit card payments, use answer_s for testing online processing.

APN selector
A selector containing rules that map access point names (APNs) to zone impact
categories based on event attribute values. APN selectors are used to determine the
appropriate impact category for GPRS calls. APN selectors were called APN groups in
previous BRM releases.

A/R
See accounts receivable (A/R).

A/R action
An adjustment, dispute, refund, settlement, or write-off. The balance impact of an A/R
action is stored in an A/R item .

See also item and item charge.

A/R item
An object in the BRM database that stores the balance impact of an A/R action such
as a payment, adjustment, dispute, settlement, refund, payment reversal, or write-off.
See also bill item.

audit objects
Data stored in the BRM database that includes historical data needed for charging. For
example, an audit object tracks the charge offer that a customer owns. During offline

Glossary-6
 Glossary

charging, ECE can find historical data about the customer that matches the time of the
event being rated.

authentication
Verification of a customer's identity, which typically is accomplished by checking the
customer's login name and password. By default, authentication takes place prior to
authorizing access to a service.

See also authorization.

authorization
1. Verification that occurs when a customer accesses a service to ensure that the
customer is allowed to do so.

Authorization is generally based on account information (for example, the charge

offer a customer owns or whether the customer has exceeded a credit limit).
Authorization occurs after authentication.

2. A process performed by a credit card processor to determine whether a credit card

is valid (for example, whether the card has not expired).

See also validate.

automatic account creation

Accounts are created automatically when customers create an account by using the
Web. AAC data is stored in /account object and /service object, for example, in the
PIN_FLD_AAC_PROMO_CODE and PIN_FLD_AAC_SOURCE field.

automatic top-up
A top-up initiated by BRM. BRM supports the following types of automatic top-ups:

• An automatic standard top-up is made when an account balance falls below a

specified threshold.

• An automatic sponsored top-up is initiated by the pin_balance_transfer utility at

specified intervals. These top-ups are based on information in the /group/topup
object associated with the account that receives the top-up.

AVS
Address Verification Service. The a credit card processing service that verifies the
name and address for a credit card transaction.

Glossary-7
 Glossary

B number
The destination phone number.

backdate
To change the date of a payment, adjustment, dispute, settlement, transfer, or write-off
so that it takes effect in the proper period instead of the date that it occurred. You
cannot backdate a transaction previous to the last run pin_ledger_report that used
the -posted option.

back-end process
A process used by system components, such as a DM, that use queuing.

• DM back-end processes connect to a database.

• Back-end processes with which client applications connect to a Connection

Manager (CM).

See also front-end process.

balance
The amount of an asset, such as U.S. dollars or minutes, that a customer owns or
owes to your company. In BRM, assets are represented by a balance element.

balance due
The total amount due on a customer's bill. This amount includes the charge from
a cycle forward item and usage item but does not include disputed or transferred
charges.

balance element
A pricing setup component that specifies attributes for one of the following:

• A currency or noncurrency asset, such as U.S. dollars or included minutes. A

balance element contains rules for rounding and consuming the asset and an
option to use it as a temporary balance element.

• A counter that tracks an item such as dollars spent or minutes talked.

balance element ID
A numeric identification of a balance element, such as 840 (US Dollars), that is
used by the BRM system. IDs for currency balance elements are defined in an ISO
standard. When you create your own noncurrency balance elements, you assign them
a balance element ID from a designated range of numbers.

Glossary-8
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balance forward accounting

One of two accounting types that determine how to create a bill and apply payments.
With balance forward accounting:

• The customer's bill includes amounts from previous bills.

• The customer's payment applies to all open items, regardless of the bill they are
from.

By default, if a payment is not enough to cover the entire amount due, the
payment is allocated to the oldest open items.

A customer account that use an automated payment method, such as a credit card,
should always use balance forward accounting.

See also open item accounting.

balance group
A balance collection that track what customers owe or are credited with for one service
or more. A balance group contains any number of currency and noncurrency balances,
such as included minutes, number of bytes, and number of email messages. To collect
payments from customers, every balance group is associated with a bill unit.

balance impact
The impact that rating has on a customer's account balance.

base class
A top-level storable class definition from which each subclass is defined.

For example, /config is a base class and /config/payment and /config/glid are
subclasses.

Batch Controller
A BRM application used for running applications automatically. See also batch handler,
metronomic execution, and scheduled execution.

batch handler
A program that you can use to run another program automatically. Batch handlers are
in turn run by the Batch Controller. See also metronomic execution and scheduled
execution.

Glossary-9
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Batch Suspense Record

A record in the BRM database for a CDR file that was suspended (also called a /
suspended_batch object). This is not the file itself, but simply a record of the file and
information about its suspension.

BEID
balance element ID. See balance element.

bill
This term has multiple meanings:

• (Noun) An object in the BRM database that stores the amount due for one billing
cycle. See also billing.

• (Verb) To assemble each balance impact and A/R amounts recorded in a balance
during one billing cycle into a /bill object.

bill cycle management

A systematic way to assign a billing day of month to accounts to enable load-
balancing.

bill item
An object in the BRM database that stores the total of each balance impact for an
event during the billing cycle of an account. There are several types of bill items:

• A usage item records the balance impacts from service usage, canceling a charge
offer and purchasing charge offers. In addition, the first month's cycle forward fee
is recorded in a usage item.

• A cycle forward item tracks the A/R for a cycle forward event.

• A cycle arrears item tracks the A/R for a cycle arrears event.

• A custom item tracks the A/R for customized bill items that you create.

bill number
A unique number that identifies a bill. Each invoice references a bill number.

bill object
An object created at the close of a billing cycle. The bill object contains the total
amount due for a customer.

See also bill.

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bill run management

A feature that enables you to do the following:

• Reduce the load and duration of billing runs.

• Fine-tune bill due dates.

bill suppression
A feature that enables you to postpone finalizing a bill until the end of a future billing
cycle.

You use bill suppression to avoid sending out unnecessary bills and incurring wasteful
expenses. For example, if the cost to create and mail a bill is greater than the balance
due, you can suppress the bill until its balance due is greater than its production costs.

bill unit
A collection of a customer's billing information, such as a billing status, billing cycle
and accounting cycle, and the balance group for which the customer receives a bill. A
bill unit is a /billinfo object.

bill unit hierarchy

A collection of bill units linked for billing. The charges for nonpaying child bill units in
bill unit hierarchies are rolled up to their paying parent bill units. Bill unit hierarchies
are based on the fields in a /billinfo object that specify whether the bill unit has a
nonpaying child, a paying parent, an immediate parent (either paying or nonpaying),
and a nonpaying pay type. Typically, a bill unit hierarchy exists within the context of an
account hierarchy, but a bill unit hierarchy can span multiple account hierarchies.

See also account hierarchy.

billed revenue
Revenue from a charge that have been included in a bill. Billed revenue is not
necessarily earned revenue. See also unbilled revenue.

You track billed revenue by running a general ledger (G/L) report.

billing
A BRM process, typically run daily, that compiles the fees incurred by customers into a
bill. Billing can also request a payment from a customer.

Glossary-11
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billing calendar
A list of days on which bill payments cannot be due and of days that are not included
when calculating payments due in a specified number of business days (for example,
holidays). Each billing calendar is stored in a separate /config/calendar object.

Billing Care
The BRM customer management application that you use to create, display, and
change customer and account information in your BRM database.

billing cycle
The period during which charges accumulate in an account before a bill is finalized. A
billing cycle is typically one month, but it can be any increment of time.

billing day of month

The day on which billing is run for a customer account. Each customer account has a
billing day of month (DOM), typically the day on which the account was created, but
you can change it. An account with multiple bill units could have more than one billing
DOM.

billing status
The status of a bill unit. The statuses are:

• Active: The account is billed when billing is run.

• Inactive: Billing is suspended when run for this bill unit.

• Error: An error occurred when billing was run.

billing-time discount
A discount that is calculated and applied at the end of the billing cycle and that can
be granted for the current billing cycle or the next one. This enables you to grant
discounts based on a balance used during a billing cycle.

billing utility
A command-line application, such as the pin_bill_accts utility, that you use to run
billing.

BRM client
See client.

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BRM database
An Oracle database used for storing, retrieving, and processing information about an
account, event, pricing, billing, and payments. See also legacy database.

BRM Gateway
An ECE component that allows ECE to send data to the BRM server for various
purposes; for example, triggering billing, and updating subscriber life-cycle states.

BRM server
See server.

BRM_home
The directory in which the BRM server software is installed. By default, BRM_home
is /opt/portal/relnum, where relnum is the number of the installed release.

BRM-initiated payment
Payment processing triggered by BRM. A payment method processed this way is
those for which a customer is automatically charged, such as credit card payments.

There are two types of BRM-initiated payment processing: transactional and

nontransactional.

See also transactional payment, nontransactional payment, and externally initiated

payment.

bulk adjustment
An adjustment you apply concurrently to a block of accounts. You perform bulk
adjustments to correct a widespread problem such as misapplication of a charge
across the board or to accommodate changes in policy that affect a large number of
accounts.

bundle
A pricing component that consists of one charge offer or more and discount offer.
Bundles are typically used to a group offer that you want to sell together. Each bundle
is associated with a single service. Only offers that apply to that service can be
included in the bundle.

Business Application SDK (BAS)

Business Application SDK (BAS) is a Java programming framework that aids in
creating customizable applications, such as Self-Care Manager.

Glossary-13
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business event
A BRM event that has significance in the BRM system and can be used for managing
BRM functionality. For example, a purchase event can trigger event notification to send
data from the BRM server to ECE.

A business event is created only after all BRM events included in its definition have
occurred. BRM includes a set of default business events and their definitions, but you
can also define custom business events.

business policies
How your company handles certain customer situations, for example:

• What to do when a customer pays only part of a bill

• The required number of characters for passwords

• The minimum credit card charge amount

You change the default business policies by editing a configuration file or customizing
BRM source code.

business profile
A method of validating a bill unit and an object to determine how they can be used
in BRM. A business profile can be used to classify a bill as prepaid, postpaid, or
convergent to determine how bills and payments should be handled.

business type
A way to categorize your customer base. BRM supports two business types by default:
consumer and business.

call detail record (CDR)

Data created by IP telephony gateways and telephone switches to record telephony
usage, such as call origin and destination.

cancel event
The event generated when a charge offer or discount offer is canceled. Cancel events
are used to assess fees associated with canceling a charge offer. A cancel event is
one of the event types you can include in the service-event map when you create a
charge offer.

CDR
See call detail record (CDR).

Glossary-14
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CDR file
Call-detail record file; a file created by IP telephony gateways and telephone switches
to record telephony usage, such as call origin and destination.

challenge handshake authentication protocol (CHAP)

An authentication protocol that authenticates a user to a network entity; for example,
the Web. This protocol ensures that the server sends a challenge to the client after the
client establishes a network connection to access the Web server.

changeset
In PDC, a container in which a pricing component is created and modified. Each user
has one or more private changesets. To publish new and modified pricing components
to the BRM database, you submit a changeset. Changesets are listed and displayed in
each user's Workspace page.

charge
A pricing component that defines how to calculate the cost of an event. BRM uses this
information to determine the balance impact to apply to a subscriber's account when
that event occurs. A charge applies to one of the following event types: one-time,
recurring, usage, rollover, or fold.

charge offer
A pricing component that contains one charge or more. Charge offers are a separate,
purchasable item. You can include charge offers with a discount offer in a bundle.
Charge offers were called products in previous BRM releases.

charge selector
A selector used to charge different fees for the same event, based on the value of one
or more account, service, or event attribute. For example, you might charge different
amounts for phone calls depending on a call's origin and destination.

charge sharing
The ability for an account to assume all or part of the charge for a service owned by
one or more other accounts. For example, a business might pay for some or all of the
wireless charges for its employees. To implement charge sharing, you create a charge
sharing group. The owner account in a charge sharing group receives the balance
impact of charges incurred by a member account.

Glossary-15
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charge sharing group

A group that consists of one group owner account and one member account or more.
The group owner account receives the balance impact of the charge incurred by the
member accounts.

chargeshare
A pricing component that determines whether an event qualifies for charge sharing,
and, if so, the charge sharing amount and balance impact. Chargeshares are
structured the same way as a discount and include most of the same components.
You create chargeshares in PDC.

See also discount, discount rule, and discount trigger.

chargeshare offer
A pricing component that determines how a charge is shared among the members
of a charge sharing group. A chargeshare offer contains one chargeshare or more.
Unlike a charge offer and discount offer, chargeshare offers are not a purchasable
item included in a bundle. Instead, they are associated with an account through a
charge sharing group.

Charges tree
In PDC, the part of a charge that displays the hierarchical structure of the charge. You
use the Charges tree to add an extended pricing feature, such as an impact category
and time period, to a charge.

charging node
A Java Virtual Machine (JVM) running Coherence that is a member of the Coherence
cluster. There can be more than one node in a Coherence cluster. A client application
that becomes a member of the Coherence cluster becomes a node in the cluster. The
Elastic Charging Controller monitors and manages all nodes the are defined in the
ECE topology file.

chart of accounts (COA)

The account list in the general ledger.

checkpoint record
A record in the BRM database that shows an incomplete credit card transaction.
Checkpoint records are indicated by the number 999 in the charge event result field.

Glossary-16
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child account
A member of an account hierarchy. Child accounts can have a paying bill unit,
nonpaying bill unit, or many of both units.

child process
See system process.

class
See storable class.

client
An application or system process that connects to a CM, or to ECE. For example:

• A client application that connects to a CM, such as Billing Care or Developer

Center
• Network applications that connect to ECE to submit usage for charging.

closed status
An account or service status that prevents the customer from using any service or
accessing any administrative Web pages. Closed status implies that the customer will
not use the account again.

You can reopen a closed account, but each charge offer needs to be repurchased
because closing an account cancels all charge offers.

See also active status and inactive status.

closed user group

A group of phone numbers, for example, a group of all mobile numbers in a company.
Calls between members of the closed user group can be rated differently from other
calls, for example, given a special discount.

cluster
One server or more that are managed as a set for load balancing and failover. These
servers can run on the same or a different node.

CM
See Connection Manager (CM).

Glossary-17
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CM Proxy
A system process (cm_proxy) that provides a fast authentication Connection Manager
(CM) connection for BRM applications. CM Proxy allows access to the database
without a login, which improves performance.

CMMP
See Connection Manager Master Process (CMMP).

Coherence cluster
An in-memory configuration of one or more system components managed by Oracle
Coherence. The system components are nodes, such as the charging node used by
ECE to rate usage.

collections
A proactive process to collect overdue accounts receivable (A/R). See Collections
Manager.

collections action
An individual activity in the collections process, such as sending a dunning letter.
Actions are organized into a collections scenario, which define the order in which
actions take place.

From the point of view of Collections Center users, actions are a collections task that
need to be completed.

collections agency
A third-party business that specializes in recovering overdue accounts receivable
(A/R). Companies can refer an account to a collections agency if their internal
collections policy fails to collect the overdue funds. Collections agencies generally use
more aggressive methods than internal collections departments.

collections agent
An employee in an internal collections department. In BRM, these employees use the
Collections Center application to keep track of a collections action.

Collections Center
A BRM application that enables a collections agent and Collections Manager to
oversee an account in collections, including the progress of both an automatic and
manual collections action. See Collections Manager.

Glossary-18
 Glossary

Collections Configuration
An application used to configure Collections Manager features.

Collections Manager
An optional product that provides collections functionality. Collections Manager
includes both client and server components.

collections profile
Used in Collections Manager to group each bill unit according to criteria that you
define. Collections profiles determine which collections scenario applies when a bill
unit enters collections. You define a profile in the Collections Configuration application
and implement them by modifying a policy opcode.

collections scenario
Used in Collections Manager to define the entry criteria that determine whether a bill
unit enters collections. Scenarios also determine the sequence of a collections action
that takes place while a bill unit is in collections and the exit criteria that determine
when it leaves collections.

collections task
In Collections Center, an individual collections action that must be completed for a
bill unit in collections. Some tasks, such as phone calls, are completed manually by a
collections agent or Collections Manager. Other tasks, such as a dunning letter or a bill
unit inactivation, are completed automatically by the system.

configLoader
An ECE utility that loads mediation specification files.

configuration file
A system file used for connecting system components and defining BRM behavior.
Most configuration files are named pin.conf for C programs and Infranet.properties
for Java programs.

Connection Manager (CM)

A BRM server program used by client applications to establish connections to the
BRM database. ACM also contains the facilities modules (FMs) that carry out BRM
functions.

Glossary-19
 Glossary

A CM functions as a daemon; an active CM is a parent process with multiple child

processes.

Connection Manager Master Process (CMMP)

A system process that redirects client connections to a CM. If a CM goes offline, the
CMMP reroutes connections to another CM.

connection pool
A set of connections maintained between an application, such as Conversion
Manager, and the CM. An incoming request is assigned a connection from this pool
and uses the connection to perform operations. When the operation is completed, the
connection is returned to the pool.

context
A communication channel between a client application and the BRM database.

contributor
A value that tracks a balance for service usage in detail. You use contributors to
keep separate a sub-balance for each service, call session, charge offer, or any other
attribute of a usage event or record. This provides flexibility for tracking noncurrency
balances, such as minutes and a shared discount.

Contributors associated with a sub-balance specify the following:

• Which event updates the sub-balance

• Which sub-balance is updated by a Batch Suspense Record

• Which sub-balances are included when the total available balance is retrieved

You specify contributors for your entire system in a configuration file. The sub-
balances that contributors create, however, are limited to an individual balance group
in an account.

control point
A logical point where BRM collects revenue assurance data.

corrective bill
A bill that is generated after corrections are made to a regular bill or a bill that was
previously corrected.

Glossary-20
 Glossary

credit
A decrease in a balance in a customer's account. Credits can be applied to both
currency and noncurrency balances, such as minutes and US dollars.

See also debit.

credit balance
An account balance to which your company has granted assets, such as minutes or
bytes. See also debit balance.

credit card processor

A company that handles credit-card verification, authorization, and payments.

credit card processor DM

The Data Manager (DM) used for connecting to a credit card processor, for example,
the Paymentech DM (dm_fusa).

credit floor
The starting point for a credit threshold and the lowest number that the balance can
be. For currency balances, the credit floor is typically 0. For noncurrency balances,
you can use a negative number. For example, you can set a credit limit for hours to 0,
at which point the service can no longer be used. If you set the credit floor to -100, and
the threshold at 10, the threshold is reached when 90 hours have been used.

credit limit
The maximum amount of a balance, such as currency or hours, that can accumulate
in an account before the customer is prevented from logging in, using a service, or
purchasing a new charge offer.

credit threshold
A percentage of a credit limit that alerts customers that they are approaching a credit
limit or triggers BRM to perform a particular action, such as topping up an account.

CSR
Customer service representative. A CSR uses Billing Care or a third-party client
application to create and manage a customer's account.

Glossary-21
 Glossary

CSR package
A package used by a CSR for logging in to Billing Care.

customer segment
A user-defined customer category such as early bill payer, reliable bill payer, and
delinquent bill payer that you can use to group accounts according to customer
billing and payment practices. An account can belong to multiple customer segments.

You can use customer segments to charge a payment fee, to provide a payment
incentive, and for bill suppression.

customer type
A customer classification defined by your company. For example, customer types
can be used for identifying the level of customer commitment and customer usage
behavior, such as Platinum, Gold, or Silver.

Customer Updater
An ECE component that loads customer data into ECE. When changes to
customer data occur in BRM, Customer Updater automatically updates ECE. See
customerLoader.

customerLoader
A utility that loads customer data into ECE. Use the customerLoader utility to load
customer data into a development system, or to load a subset of customer data into a
production system. For example, if you migrate an account into the BRM system, you
might need to load a subset of accounts into ECE.

Do not run the customerLoader utility without the -incremental parameter in a

production environment.

cycle arrears event

A recurring event generated at the end of the accounting cycle. Cycle arrears events
are used to charge for a service provided during the previous month. See cycle
forward event.

cycle arrears fee

A fee charged on the last day of each accounting cycle for a service that were
provided during that cycle.

See also cycle forward fee.

Glossary-22
 Glossary

cycle arrears item

A bill item that includes a balance impact resulting from cycle arrears charges.

cycle event
A recurring event, typically used for charging a fee. See cycle forward event, cycle
arrears event, and cycle forward arrears event.

cycle fee
A recurring monthly fee applied on the first or last day of each accounting cycle, for
example, a $15 monthly subscription fee for the email service.

cycle forward arrears event

An event generated on the first day of each accounting cycle, to create a balance
impact at the start of the billing cycle. However, the customer is not charged for the
event until the end of the billing cycle. A cycle forward arrears charge enables you to
recognize unearned revenue at the start of the billing cycle.

cycle forward arrears fee

A recurring fee applied on the first day of each accounting cycle but billed at the end of
the cycle for a service that will be provided during that cycle.

You use cycle forward arrears fees to recognize unearned revenue in G/L reports for a
cycle fee that is not yet billed

See cycle forward arrears event.

cycle forward arrears item

A bill item that includes a balance impact resulting from cycle forward arrears charges.

cycle forward event

A recurring event that is typically used for charging a fee in advance of service.

There are five cycle forward events:

• Cycle forward monthly

• Cycle forward bimonthly

• Cycle forward quarterly

• Cycle forward semiannually

• Cycle forward annually

You can also define your own cycle event, for example, weekly cycle events.

Glossary-23
 Glossary

cycle forward fee

A recurring fee for a service that will be provided during that cycle.

There are five types of cycle forward fees:

• cycle_forward_monthly

• cycle_forward_bimonthly

• cycle_forward_quarterly

• cycle_forward_semiannually

• cycle_forward_annually

You can define your own cycles, for example, weekly cycles.

See also cycle arrears fee.

cycle forward item

A bill item that includes a balance impact resulting from a cycle forward charge.

daemon
A process that runs in the background and performs administrative tasks for the
operating system at predefined times or in response to a certain event.

data access system

A database or other data storage system such as the Paymentech credit card
processor.

data dictionary
A data management facility that contains each field and storable class definition for the
current BRM database.

Data Manager (DM)

A BRM server process that translate BRM operations into a database language. BRM
uses DMs to communicate with the Oracle database and the credit card processor
database. You can write custom DMs to interact with third-party or legacy systems.

database number
A number that identifies a BRM database. For an application to access a particular
database, the application, the Data Manager (DM), the Connection Manager (CM),
and the Connection Manager Master Process (CMMP), if any, must all use the same
database number, which is defined by an entry in the configuration file.

Glossary-24
 Glossary

data-ready indicator
A flag for each event listed in the /channel object that shows whether the event
has occurred. A channel determines how a set of events gets published to an LDAP
directory server.

debit
An increase in a balance in a customer's account. Debits can be applied to both
currency and noncurrency balances, such as minutes US dollars.

See also credit.

debit balance
An account balance to which the customer owes assets, such as US dollars. See also
credit balance.

default balance group

The balance group in a bill unit that receives the balance impact for an event that is
not associated with any service.

default product
See system charge offer.

delayed billing
A BRM configuration that postpones some of the billing activities to ensure that an
event that occur during a given accounting cycle are recorded properly before you run
billing applications. Delayed billing is used for offline charging, when an event for the
previous billing cycle can arrive after the end of the cycle.

delayed event
An event that is rated before it is loaded into the BRM database. The events are called
delayed because there is a delay between rating and loading. Delayed events are
loaded into the BRM database by using Rated Event (RE) Loader. The delayed event
storable class type is /event/delayed/service_type.

deposit
A sum of money given as security for a device acquired for temporary use or to ensure
payment for a service rendered.

Glossary-25
 Glossary

destination
The telephone number where a call is received. The destination can be identified by a
country code, area code, or a specific telephone number.

Developer Center
A suite of applications that enables developers to add a storable class and field, test
and run an opcode, view the contents of an object in the BRM database, and map data
from an event log file to objects in the BRM database. Developer Center includes three
applications: Storable Class Editor, Opcode Workbench, and Object Browser.

device
An item managed by an optional manager such as the Number Manager, or a custom
application created with the Device Management framework. A device can be a
physical item such as a set-top box or a virtual one such as a telephone number.

Device Management framework

A storable class, opcode, and utilities that enable you to create or customize
applications for managing a device. Optional managers such as Number Manager
use the Device Management framework.

device state
The status of a device, for example, New, Assigned, or Released. For example, before
a telephone number is assigned to a service, the device state is New. After it is
assigned, the state is Assigned.

Diameter Gateway
An ECE component that serves as the Online Charging System (OCS) front-end
server for the BRM system. It processes a network request for Gy, Sy, and Sh
Diameter interfaces. It acts as a Diameter Server and presents the BRM Elastic
Charging Engine to the network as a Diameter Credit-Control Application. It translates
Diameter requests received from a Diameter Client (for example, Application Servers,
Policy Servers or IMS-GWFs) into Elastic Charging Engine Java API requests. It
translates the response from the Elastic Charging Server back into Diameter requests
and responds back to the requesting Diameter Client.

discount
A pricing component that can reduce the charge associated with an event; grant or
consume a noncurrency balance, such as included minutes or loyalty points; or track
usage or spending by using counters.

Glossary-26
 Glossary

discount balance impact

A pricing element that determines the amount of a discount and which impacts a
balance. A discount balance impact can be a percentage or a fixed amount and can
increase or decrease the balance.

discount exclusion rule

A rule that establishes a mutually exclusive relationship between more than one
discount so that two discounts cannot be used by an account at the same time, or
owned by an account at the same time.

discount expression
A mathematical formula that BRM evaluates to produced a value. You use discount
expressions to define the following discount components: trigger conditions, end value
of the last quantity range, quantity range basis, and what to discount (usage, a
balance, and so forth).

discount filter
A discount element that specifies criteria that a charge or a portion of a charge must
satisfy to be eligible for the discount. For example, a discount might apply only to calls
made on weekends or during December.

discount mode
An attribute of a discount offer that determines how to apply the offer to a charge when
the charge or a portion of the charge is eligible for multiple discount offers. Depending
on the mode, the discount offer can be applied to the original charge amount or only
to the amount that remains after previous discount offers have been applied. Discount
modes are also used to determine how multiple discount rules apply to a charge.

discount offer
A pricing component that contains one discount or more. Discount offers are a
separate, purchasable item similar to a charge offer. You can include discount offers
with charge offers in a bundle. Discount offers were called discount objects in previous
BRM releases.

discount rule
The part of a discount that specifies the type and amount of the discount. Each
discount rule can have one or more steps, which define threshold values. Each step
in turn can contain one discount balance impact or more. A rule is linked to a specific
discount trigger.

Glossary-27
 Glossary

You create discount rules in PDC.

discount selector
A selector that determines the appropriate discount to use at run time based on the
values of a specified event attribute. You can use a discount selector instead of a
discount in a discount offer.

discount sharing
The ability for an account to share its discount with other accounts. For example, a
group of employees might share a pool of minutes in their company's mobile phone
account, or a parent might purchase discounts on her email service and want those
discounts to apply to her children's email services as well.

discount sharing group

A group that consists of one group owner account and one or more member accounts.
The group owner shares a discount that it owns with the member account. An event
generated as a result of member activity are discounted using the group owner's
shared discounts.

discount trigger
An element of a discount that specifies one or more conditions that must be met
before the discount can be applied. You use a discount trigger to ensure that a usage
or balance reaches certain levels before a discount is applied.

dispute
A process that records a customer's objection to an amount billed to an account or
to an event that affected the noncurrency balance of an account. Use Billing Care to
open, track, and settle disputes.

distributed payment
A portion of a larger suspended payment. A suspended payment can be broken into
any number of distributed payments, each of which can be applied to a customer
account. Distributed payments are tracked in BRM by their transaction ID and
transaction ID values.

distributed transaction
See XA transaction.

Glossary-28
 Glossary

DM
See Data Manager (DM).

dm_email
The DM that enables email notification and invoicing.

dm_fusa
The DM that provides an interface to the Paymentech credit card processing service.

dm_ldap
An optional DM that maps the BRM object model to the LDAP directory server object
model.

dm_oracle
The DM that provides an interface to an Oracle database.

See also Oracle Data Manager.

dm_vertex
The Data Manager (DM) that provides an interface to Vertex Communications Tax Q
Series, which handles telecommunications taxation, and Vertex Sales Tax Q Series,
which calculates taxes for sales and use.

DOM
See billing day of month.

domain name
On the Internet, a domain is a group of computers whose host names share a
common suffix known as the domain name. The domain name typically follows the
@ sign in an email address.

driver machine
The system used to administer ECE. As a best practice, do not install an ECE node on
the driver machine; install them on separate a remote server.

Glossary-29
 Glossary

dunning letter
A letter sent as part of the collections process to customers with an overdue balance.
The content of the letter can vary based on the situation.

EAI
See Enterprise Applications Integration (EAI).

EAI Manager
An optional component that publishes a business event and enables you to
integrate BRM with other data-sharing applications in your enterprise. See Enterprise
Applications Integration (EAI).

earned revenue
Revenue that is earned at the time that a G/L report is run. Revenue from usage,
purchase, cancel fees is always earned. Revenue from a cycle forward fee can be
earned or unearned, depending on when the G/L report is run. See also unearned
revenue.

ECE_home
The directory in which the ECE server software is installed.

Elastic Charging Client

The interface between a network client and the Elastic Charging Server. For example,
to perform offline charging, Offline Mediation Controller connects to the Elastic
Charging Client to submit a usage request to the Elastic Charging Server.

Elastic Charging Controller

The ECE command-line utility used for operational management of ECE.

Email Manager
An optional component that integrates your company's email service with the BRM
system. Use Email Manager to authentication and authorization email users.

enrichment
The process during charging in which data is added to a usage request or data is
normalized. For example, telephone numbers are normalized to be represented in a
consistent format.

Glossary-30
 Glossary

Enterprise Applications Integration (EAI)

An optional component enabling the use of BRM with other data-sharing applications
in your enterprise.

error tolerance
The allowable error due to rounding when converting euro and EMU currencies. You
use PDC to set the currency error tolerance for each EMU currency. It can be based
on a percentage or minimum and maximum amount of the total amount billed.

event
An action that is recognized by BRM and recorded in the BRM database. For example,
when a customer makes a phone call, an event is generated that contains information
about that phone call, such as the time the call was made, the origin and destination
of the call, and the duration of the call. BRM uses the data it collects about events to
calculate how much to charge customers for them.

event attribute
A component of an event that you can use as input for calculating the charge for the
event, for example, the origin or destination of a telephone call. You can use event
attributes to implement a charge selector.

event definition
Data that defines the rating attributes that ECE can accept when processing a usage
request. You perform event definition in PDC and then publish the event definitions to
ECE.

event notification
A feature that you use to carry out actions automatically based on the occurrence of a
specified event.

exchange rate
The value of one currency in relation to another. In BCC, you can define exchange
rates between any listed currencies as becoming valid on a specific date.

extended pricing feature

A pricing element—such as an impact category, time period, price override, or price
selector—that enables you to use the same charge to apply different prices to an event
based on various attributes of the event, such as where and when it occurred. You use
the Charges tree in PDC to add extended pricing features to a charge.

Glossary-31
 Glossary

extended rating attribute (ERA)

An attribute of a service or account used to provide a special fee or discount (for
example, a friends and family offer).

Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP)

An authentication protocol which supports multiple authorization mechanisms used for
RADIUS; for example, EAP-Tunneled Transport Layer Security.

External Manager Gateway

The ECE component that receives a request and balance query requests from the
BRM server.

External Module (EM)

A component similar to a Facilities Module (FM) that performs functions such as
exporting an event to external systems. An EM is not linked to a CM in the same way
that an FM is. Instead, it runs as a separate process that you need to start and stop.

externally initiated payment

BRM payments that are triggered by an action from a financial institution.

Examples of a payment method processed this way is a check and cash payment.
Typically, after such payments are received from a customer, they are sent to a
bank. The bank then initiates the BRM payment processing by sending you a list
of payments that have been received and deposited. If the payment information is not
sent to BRM through a payment gateway, you use Billing Care to allocate the payment
and update the account.

See also BRM-initiated payment.

Facilities Module (FM)

An opcode set that is called by a BRM application or a system process that manages
BRM activity and ensures that data is processed correctly.

There are several types of FMs, for example, FMs that include opcodes for running
billing.

failed payment
A payment that doesn't comply with the financial practices of your company because,
upon collection, it has been dishonored or rejected by the bank. For example,
payments can fail due to expired credit and debit cards, incorrect account details,
and insufficient funds.

Glossary-32
 Glossary

failover
A backup component that is used if the primary component fails or is otherwise
unavailable.

field
The simplest data item in BRM. Each field in the BRM system has a unique ID, name,
and type.

You can use fields in many different object and opcode definitions. Objects consist of
variable numbers of field/value pairs.

You use the PIN_FLIST_FLD_GET and PIN_FLIST_FLD_SET macros to retrieve and

set field values.

finalized bill
A bill number that is ready to be paid. The status of each bill item associated with the
bill has been changed from pending to open so that they stop accumulating a charge
and payments can be applied to them. In addition, a payment due date has been
added to the bill. If necessary, an invoice is generated for the bill. A new bill has been
created to handle bill items for the next billing cycle.

fixed charge
A component of a balance impact that specifies the amount of the impact that should
be charged or credited to an account's balance. It is called a fixed charge because the
amount of the impact is not affected by changes in account usage or the quantity of
an event being rated. You use a fixed charge to charge for a set quantity of each item
charge offer and calculate a charge for rates.

flist
A field list. An flist is a variable-length list of field/value pairs. Flists provide input and
output parameters to a BRM opcode and functions.

FM
See Facilities Module (FM).

fold charge
A charge that typically changes a balance to zero or converts the balance into another
balance element. For example, you could configure a fold charge to cancel unused
included hours at the end of each month.

Glossary-33
 Glossary

front-end process
A Data Manager (DM) or daemon process that communicates with Connection
Manager (CM) and client applications.

See also back-end process.

fusa
See Paymentech.

general ledger (G/L) interface

A feature that enables the BRM system to provide data to a general ledger (G/L)
system. You assign a G/L ID to an event that impacts the balance of an account, such
as a usage charge. You then run G/L reports to calculate monthly revenue data.

general ledger (G/L) report

A report that you run monthly to collect and report revenue data.

generation change
A type of package transition that enables you to transition customers between a
2G (second generation) and a 3G (third generation) wireless package and service.
Packages are called 2G or 3G depending on whether the wireless service they provide
runs on a 2G or 3G wireless network.

geocode
A geographic code used to determine a tax jurisdiction.

geographical zoning
The definition of zones based on geographical coordinates. For example, you can rate
phone calls based on the geographic distance between the call origin and destination.

G/L account
G/L (general ledger) accounts in BRM and PDC are equivalent to G/L accounts in a
commercial accounting software package.

See also G/L ID and general ledger (G/L) interface.

Glossary-34
 Glossary

G/L ID
A general ledger ID. A G/L ID is assigned to an event to record revenue. For example,
you keep a record of revenue from a usage charge by mapping usage balance
impacts to G/L IDs.

G/L segment
A set of customer accounts that share a common general ledger (G/L) report. By using
G/L segments, you can create general ledger reports that include data for specific sets
of customers, for example:

• You can record the revenue for a charge offer in a different G/L account depending
on who bought the charge offer.

• You can host multiple service providers and deliver individualized accounting data
to each service provider.

global charge sharing group

A charge sharing group whose members include either every account in the system
or every service of a specific type. You specify every account or every service of a
specific type as members by using a type-only POID.

global transaction
See XA transaction.

GPRS Manager
An optional component that integrates BRM with your GPRS network services.

group object
A BRM database record that stores information about an account group.

GSM Manager
An optional component that supports integrating a GSM service with your BRM
system.

handle
See statement handle.

hierarchical account group

See account group.

Glossary-35
 Glossary

identity cache
An ECE cache that stores the public user identity information of customers; for
example, the customer's phone number, International Mobile Subscriber Identity
(IMSI), and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) address.

impact category
An extended pricing feature that enables the same charge to apply different pricing
based on the values of an event attribute. For example, to configure different pricing
for calls made to different countries, you add impact categories for each destination
country to the charge. When a call occurs, the pricing associated with the impact
category for that call's destination is applied to the call. PDC supports two types of
impact categories: zone and charge selector.

inactive status
A temporary status for an account or service. Inactive status implies that the customer
will use the account again in the future, as opposed to closed status. Inactivating an
account does not cancel the charge offer that the account owns.

Inactive status usually means one of the following:

• The account or service is new and is waiting for provisioning.

• An existing account or service has been temporarily suspended from normal

activity, usually because the customer exceeded a credit limit or did not pay a
bill.

Depending on how your system is configured, a customer with an inactive account

might be able to use Web account-access pages.

See also active status and closed status.

in-advance billing
A recurring charge option that specifies how many months or days to charge
customers for in their first bill.

Infranet.properties file
See configuration file.

inter operator tariff

Part of a roaming agreement that defines the pricing and settlement methods for a
roaming event.

Glossary-36
 Glossary

interconnect (IC) product

A rating component consisting of the source and destination network and the service
used for a roaming or interconnection call.

interconnection
The process of handling a usage event over physical lines between one network
operator and another.

introductory message
An HTML file you display during Web-based account creation, usually to confirm the
customer's package choice. See welcome message.

invoice
An itemized list of each charge included in a bill. BRM can generate invoices to
request payments. Invoice files are stored in the BRM database.

invoice account
An account that uses the invoice payment method.

invoice reminder
A message printed on an invoice to remind customers of an overdue balance. Used
as part of the collections process. You set up invoice reminders by using the Universal
Message Store (UMS) framework.

IP Address Administration Center

The BRM device management application that you use to create and manage your
IP address device and APN device inventories. This application is a provided with IP
Address Manager.

IP address device
An IP address stored and managed as a device in BRM. The BRM IP Address
Manager allows you to manage your IP address inventory by storing IP addresses
as devices in a /device/ip object.

IP Address Manager
An optional component that you use to manage your APN and IP address inventories.

Glossary-37
 Glossary

item
An object in the BRM database that stores information used for billing and maintaining
the balance forward accounting of an account. See also bill item and A/R item .

item charge
The total cost of the event tracked by an item during an account's billing cycle. Item
charges are stored in a usage item, cycle items, and custom items. They contribute to
the balance of a bill and are listed in Billing Care.

item charge offer

A charge offer associated with a one-time purchase fee that does not contains a usage
charge or recurring charge. For example, a promotional t-shirt, an installation charge,
and a setup charge are all item charge offers.

JConsole
A monitoring tool that complies with the Java Management Extensions (JMX)
specification. You can use JConsole and other JMX editors to configure ECE by
editing MBeans.

JMX-management-enabled node
An ECE node that has a JMX port specified and has the start CohMgt parameter set
to true in the ECE topology file. When this node starts, it provides a JMX management
service on the specified host and port, which is used to expose ECE configuration
MBeans. This enables you to edit the MBean attributes by using a JMX editor such
as JConsole. You designate only one node as a JMX-management-enabled node for
each unique IP address in your topology.

jurisdiction
See tax jurisdiction.

LDAP
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, a set of protocols for accessing data
directories. LDAP Manager is a service integration component that you install on top of
a BRM system.

LDAP Data Manager

A DM that maps the BRM object model to the LDAP directory server object model.
Also called dm_ldap.

Glossary-38
 Glossary

LDAP directory server

A server that stores customer information and provides access to the information by
using LDAP.

legacy database
A non-BRM database containing data that you can migrate to the BRM database.

log file
A text file that records the status of a system component. A system administrator
checks log files to find and fix problems in the system. See also pinlog.

login name
A unique name that a customer uses to access a service, such as broadband access.

mandate
An authorization from a customer allowing the bank to debit the customer's account
for any payment that the customer needs to make using direct debit. A mandate is
implemented only once during the life of the account: before charging the customer for
the first time.

manual top-up
A top-up initiated through a CSR tool or a customer self-care application. BRM
supports the following types of manual top-ups:

• A manual standard top-up is made by a customer to his own account.

• A manual sponsored top-up is made from one account to another account. These
top-ups can be initiated by the paying account or by the receiving account. When
they are initiated by the receiving account, they must be accompanied by a valid
top-up PIN.

master process
A system process that handles an initial connection and then hands the connection off
to a child process. For example, a Data Manager (DM) master process handles the
initial connection request from Connection Manager (CM).

member account
An account that belongs to any of the following account groups:

• discount sharing group or charge sharing group

If a sharing group owner account has invited a member account to participate in

the a discount or charge sharing group:

Glossary-39
 Glossary

– Each sponsored charge incurred by member accounts are paid by the owner
account.

– A sponsored discount belonging to the owner account are shared with

member accounts.
An account can be a member of more than one sharing group.

• sponsored top-up group

A member of a sponsored top-up group receives top-ups from the sponsored

top-up group owner account. To join a sponsored top-up group, an account must
have its /topup object linked to the appropriate /group/topup object. An account
can be a member of only one sponsored top-up group.

member service
A service that belongs to a service group. Each service group contains a subscription
service and one or more member services. Member services can benefit from a
discount owned by the subscription service. Member services can also be associated
with a device owned by the subscription service.

merchant
A name that tells the credit card processor DM which merchant number to use when
sending a transaction to a credit card processor. By default, all accounts use the
merchant defined in the Connection Manager (CM) configuration file.

merchant number
The number that identifies an account with a credit card processor.

metronomic execution
Repeated execution of a batch handler at a specified interval. See also scheduled
execution.

midsession rated event

A rated event generated when a Diameter update operation occurs during a network
session. By default, ECE generates rated events for a network session only when a
Diameter terminate operation ends the session. To avoid waiting until the end of a
lengthy session to recognize revenue for the part of the session that subscribers have
already consumed, however, you can configure ECE to generate midsession rated
events each time a Diameter update operation occurs in an ongoing session.

Glossary-40
 Glossary

network operator
The owner of a physical network responsible for the physical structure and operation
of the network components.

node
A computer that runs one server or more.

nonpaying bill unit

In a bill unit hierarchy, a bill unit has a charge that is rolled up to a paying parent bill
unit. Charges for a nonpaying bill unit are paid by the account that owns the paying bill
unit.

A nonpaying bill unit is also known as a subordinate bill unit.

See also paying account.

nonrated event
An event, such as a payment or refund event, that is not rated, but might have a
balance impact.

nonsubordinate bill unit

See paying bill unit.

nontransactional payment
A BRM-initiated payment that occurs in two or more communication sessions between
BRM and a payment processing service. A subsequent session can occur online or
offline; for example, processing service personnel may send payment information to
you over a network or on CDs.

See also transactional payment.

notes
Comments about changes in a customer's account that explain a transaction and
record communication with the customer.

NPA-NXX
In North American telephony, the combination of the area code and the three-digit
prefix of a phone number. The NPA (Number Plan Area), or area code delineates a toll
area in the US, Canada, and Mexico. NXX refers to the exchange, which is the three
digits following the area code.

Glossary-41
 Glossary

Number Administration Center

A GUI application used for creating and managing an inventory of telephone numbers
in the BRM system. Number Administration Center is part of Number Manager.

Number Manager
A set of BRM server components that support managing telephone number inventory.

object
A collection of data in the BRM database. For example, there are objects to contain
the data for an account, a bill, an event, and a service. The template for an object is
defined as a storable class. An object is a run-time instance of a storable class.

Objects are referenced by client applications that use the BRM API. They map directly
to SQL objects in the database tables.

Object Browser
An application in Developer Center that you use to view the contents of an object in
the BRM database.

object ID
The unique object identifier in a POID. For example, the object ID in the following
POID is 8606:

0.0.0.1 /account 8606 0

offer
A pricing component that can be purchased by customers. See charge offer or
discount offer.

offer profile
A set of policies that define how policy-driven charging functions for a customer. For
example, you can have an offer profile called "Platinum" for a data service and define
its balance element as Megabytes Used. You can define a policy labeled FairUsage,
which has three levels, Low QoS, Medium QoS, and High QoS, with each level
containing a usage range valid for that quality of service.

on-purchase billing
A feature you use to bill a customer immediately for a purchase rather than when the
customer's billing cycle ends.

Glossary-42
 Glossary

In previous BRM releases, this feature was called on-demand billing.

one-time charge
A nonrecurring charge, such as setup or cancellation fee.

one-time discount
A discount that applies to a one-time charge, such as a purchase fee, or that grants
balance amounts once. A one-time discount grant can be valid either for a specified
number of billing cycles or for a specified time period. For example, you can grant 100
minutes that can be used over a period of 6 months.

opcode
An operation used by client applications and scripts to carry out BRM functionality,
such as create an account and run billing.

There are two types of opcodes: a system opcode, and a policy opcode. System
opcodes perform basic operations; you cannot change them. A policy opcode perform
higher-level operations and you can change their default behavior. For example, you
can modify a policy opcode to customize how passwords are validated.

Opcode Workbench
A GUI application in Developer Center that you use to test applications and
customized components. You use Opcode Workbench to run an opcode. Opcode
Workbench includes all the functionality of the command-line utility testnap plus
additional features.

open item accounting

One of two accounting types that determine how to create a bill and apply payments.
With open item accounting:

• The customer's bill does not include amounts from previous bills. If a customer
does not pay a bill, the next bill does not include a charge for the bill that the
customer did not pay.

• By default, if a payment is not enough to cover the entire amount due, the
payment is allocated to the oldest open item.

A customer account that use an automated payment method, such as a credit card,
should always use balance forward accounting.

Glossary-43
 Glossary

Oracle Data Manager

The Data Manager (DM) that provides a link between the Connection Manager (CM)
and the BRM database. Also called dm_oracle.

Oracle NoSQL Database

An ECE component that temporarily stores rated event information before loading it
into the BRM database.

Order Manager
An opcode and storable class set you can use to manage orders and sub-orders or to
connect an existing order management system to BRM.

ordered balance group

An object in the BRM database containing links to the charge sharing group and
discount sharing group that a member has joined, listed in order by rank. The ordered
balance group belongs to the group member rather than to the group owner. The
ordered balance group list determines the sequence in which the sharing groups'
balance is impacted by a member-generated event.

origin
The telephone number from which a call is made. Depending on how your IP gateway
is configured, the origin can be identified by a country code, area code, or a specific
telephone number.

original payment
The first instance of a payment that is saved to BRM, either through Billing Care or
a payment processor. Original payments can be saved initially to suspense or to a
customer account, but have never been moved back and forth between the two.

package
A pricing component that contains one bundle or more. You use packages to offer your
service to customers. Packages were called plans in previous BRM releases.

You cannot create a customer account without a package, because the package
specifies which services a customer can use.

package list
A pricing component that contains one package or more. Typically, you use package
lists to group packages by customer type. For example, you might create a package
list that includes packages for customers within a particular age range or who live in
a particular area. To make a package available for customers to purchase, you must

Glossary-44
 Glossary

include the package in a package list. Package lists were called plan lists in previous
BRM releases.

parent account
An account in an account hierarchy that has a child account under it. A parent account
can have a paying bill unit, nonpaying bill unit, or many of both units.

partitioning
An optional database feature that splits tables and indexes into smaller, more
manageable units. When you no longer need the tables stored in a partition, you can
purge them from your database by deleting the partition. This helps control the growth
of your BRM database.

password authentication protocol (PAP)

An authentication protocol that uses the user name and password to validate users.

paying account
An account whose bill unit pays its own charge and the charges of its nonpaying child
bill units, if any.

paying bill unit

In a bill unit hierarchy, a bill unit responsible for its own charge and the charge of its
nonpaying child bill units, if any. Charges in a paying bill unit are paid by the account
that owns the paying bill unit.

A paying bill unit is also known as a nonsubordinate bill unit.

See also paying account.

payload
The field in an event definition that is relevant to usage charging.

Payload Generator External Module (EM)

A component of EAI Manager and other EAI-based applications. The Payload
Generator EM collects an event, generates the data necessary to publish a business
event, and sends the data to the application.

Glossary-45
 Glossary

payment channel
The delivery method by which customer payments are sent to a financial institution.
For example, payment channels include the Internet, Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
phone service, Automated Clearing House (ACH), and lockbox.

payment fee
A one-time, nonrecurring penalty that can be charged to an account for a payment
that fails due to financial errors. For example, if a customer check is denied due to
insufficient funds, or a credit card is invalid because it has expired, you can charge the
customer a payment fee.

payment gateway
A third-party BRM-initiated payment transaction application that supplies payment
information to BRM.

A payment gateway receives payment files from multiple sources (for example a bank
or automatic clearing house), preprocesses them, formats the files, and calls for an
opcode to record the payments in the database.

payment ID
A unique number that identifies a specific payment. You use payment IDs to process a
payment, refund, and payment reversal with Billing Care.

payment incentive
A special compensation for a customer who pays a bill early and in full. Payment
incentives typically reward customers by reducing their bill amount or by crediting their
accounts with minutes.

payment method
The way by which a customer pays a bill. The most common payment methods are
credit card, invoice, and nonsubordinate bill unit.

payment reversal
Reverses the record of a payment in the BRM database. For example, if a customer
makes a credit card payment that is recorded in the database, but the payment cannot
be deposited because of an expired credit card, you can reverse the payment so that
the payment is still open.

Glossary-46
 Glossary

payment suspense account

An ownerless account that stores a suspended payment along with the details of each
suspended payment, such as credit card number, payment channel, payment method,
and so forth.

payment term
Specifies how to calculate the due date of a bill. You use payment terms to set due
dates a specified number of days after the billing cycle end date or on a specified day
of the month. All the payment terms in a BRM system are stored in the same /config/
payment_term object.

Paymentech
A credit card and direct debit processing service that BRM supports.

The initials FUSA are sometimes used to represent Paymentech in BRM file names.
For example, the Paymentech DM is named dm_fusa.

Paymentech Manager
An optional component that integrates BRM with the Paymentech software.

paytransaction ID
A unique identifier generated by BRM for each payment reversal that occurred due
to suspended payment recycling. BRM uses paytransaction IDs internally to track a
recycled payment back to its original payment. The paytransaction ID of a payment
reversal is equal to the transaction ID of the payment it reversed.

PCM
See Portal Communications Module (PCM).

pcm_client service
The service that BRM utilities and programs, such as a service integration component,
use to log in to the BRM system. The root account includes the pcm_client service.

PCP
Portal Communications Protocol. A protocol that uses an object/transaction model to
allow interprocess communications.

Glossary-47
 Glossary

PDC_home
The directory in which Pricing Design Center (PDC) (PDC) is installed.

pending
A status for a bill item. A pending item is still collecting a charge, and has not been
included in a bill.

pending close
An account status option that allows you to set a future date for closing an account.

permission
authorization for a user to access a particular BRM application or to perform a
particular task in an application. See also role.

Permissioning Center
The BRM application that you use to manage the role and the permission of your
customer service representative (CSR).

PID
Process ID. A number that identifies a master process, child process, or thread. Each
CM or DM process is identified by a unique PID.

PIN
The library that contains routines for managing and manipulating a flist and object,
handling an error, and using a configuration file.

pin.conf file
See configuration file.

pinlog
A log file that records errors or other activity. Most pinlog files are named
program.pinlog, as in dm_oracle.pinlog, but some BRM applications use
default.pinlog.

POID
Portal object ID. A unique 64-bit identifier assigned to each BRM database object
when it is created. A POID enables you to have multiple instantiations of the same
storable class. For example, every account object has a unique POID. An account
POID looks like this:

Glossary-48
 Glossary

0.0.0.1 /account 8606 0

A POID consists of four components:

• A database number. In the preceding example, “0.0.0.1."

• An object type. In the preceding example, “/account."

• A unique object ID. In the preceding example, “8606."

• A revision number. In the preceding example, “0."

You cannot change an object's POID, except for the revision number, which is updated
automatically each time the object changes.

See also type-only POID.

point of title passage

When calculating taxes, the point of title passage indicates whether the title to a
tangible property transfer at the origin or at the destination. In most cases, the point of
title passage is the destination.

policy
See Policy FM and business policies.

Policy FM
A Facilities Module (FM) that implements a policy opcode. You customize a policy
opcode to change the default behavior of the BRM system.

policy opcode
A policy opcode is an operation that implements BRM functionality. You can customize
policy opcodes to suit your business needs.

See opcode.

port
TCP/IP port. Each BRM system process is associated with a particular port on a
specific computer.

Portal Communications Module (PCM)

A library of functions that runs opcodes and sends them through the BRM system.
The PCM is used to manipulate an object in the BRM database and control
communications channels to the database.

Glossary-49
 Glossary

The PCM API runs on top of the PCP and controls all object manipulation and access
to the BRM database.

prerated event
An event for which a charge is assigned by a policy opcode or through a reason code
file. These prerated events are not processed by the charges defined in your product
offering.

See also rated event.

price selector
An association of one or more event fields with a specific value that you use when you
configure a charge selector or a discount selector.

Pricing Design Center (PDC)

The application you use to create and manage your product offerings, such as a
package and charge offer. A product offering represents a service you offer to your
customers and the price of those services. A service is a commodity, such as a mobile
phone line or an Internet connection, that your customers can purchase and use.

pricing
A balance impact configuration that determines the cost of an event or the effect of
a discount. You configure pricing in a charge and discount. Optionally, pricing for a
charge can include a quantity range, effective period, minimum charge, and price tier.
If you use an extended pricing feature, such as an impact category and time period, a
charge can include multiple pricing instances.

pricing component
Elements that define a product offering. Pricing components can include a charge,
discount, charge offer, discount offer, bundle, package, and package list.

See also setup component.

Pricing Updater
A process that loads pricing data from Pricing Design Center (PDC) and updates the
ECE pricing cache when alterations to pricing data are published from Pricing Design
Center.

pricingLoader
An ECE utility that loads pricing data from an XML file into ECE. The pricingLoader
utility is used only on test or standalone installations on which Oracle Communications

Glossary-50
 Glossary

Pricing Design Center (PDC) (PDC) is not used. Do not run pricingLoader and Pricing
Updater on the same ECE deployment.

pricing profile
A list of pricing capabilities that specifies which pricing features are displayed in the
PDC UI. You use pricing profiles to adapt the UI to your business needs and to simplify
the user experience. For example, if you do not use time to determine how much to
charge for the use of a service, you can set up a pricing profile that does not include
the time feature.

pricing table
The table used to configure the pricing of an event associated with a charge or a
discount. Each row in the table represents a balance impact; either a debit, a credit,
or a counter. Simple charges that do not use an extended pricing feature contain
only one pricing table, as does each discount. Charges that use an extended pricing
feature contain multiple pricing tables.

Pricing Updater
An ECE process that loads pricing data from Pricing Design Center (PDC) to ECE.

primary currency
A customer's account in EMU countries use a primary and secondary currency. The
primary currency is the currency that the customer uses to pay a bill. The secondary
currency is required to convert one EMU currency to another, and to support the
transition to the euro.

primary database schema

In multischema systems, the database schema that contains each configuration,
pricing, audit trail, and uniqueness object. All applications that modify those objects
must be connected to the primary schema.

Modifications to configuration, pricing, and audit trail objects are always performed
by the primary DM in the primary schema. Secondary DMs can modify uniqueness
objects in the primary schema by using schema qualifications.

The primary schema also contains subscriber data, such as an event and account
object.

product offering
A representation of a service available to your customers and the price of that service.
A product offering is a pricing component you create in PDC, such as a charge offer,

Glossary-51
 Glossary

discount offer, bundle, package, and package list. A set of product offerings was called
a price list in previous BRM releases.

profile
A method of storing custom information about a customer's account. When you
configure an extended rating attribute (ERA) for an account, BRM stores the values
in a profile. You can also create custom profiles to store information such as the
following:

• Results of a marketing survey.

• Legacy account numbers.

• Additional service information, such as chat room nicknames.

See also profile sharing group, business profile, and collections profile.

profile sharing group

A group that enables a profile created for an account's service to be shared with
services owned by another account. A profile stores an extended rating attribute (ERA)
or other types of information about an account.

A profile sharing group can be used to make an ERA, such as a friends and family
list, available to multiple customers. When a profile sharing group generates an event,
shared profiles are checked to see if they are valid to rate or discount the event.

promotional code
A code entered by customers during account creation that specifies which package
they can purchase. With Web-based account creation, you can associate packages
with promotional codes.

proration
To assess fees based on partial use. If a charge offer includes a cycle forward fee and
a customer can purchase or cancel the charge offer in the middle of a billing cycle, you
can prorate the charge to apply to the amount of time that the charge offer was owned.

provisioning
The process of preparing a service for activation on the network, for example,
identifying a telephone number or port number.

Provisioning Data Manager

A DM used for a sending service and device provisioning request to a provisioning
system.

Glossary-52
 Glossary

provisioning tag
An element that configures a service after an account purchases a charge offer or a
discount offer that contains the tag. For example, a provisioning tag can be used to
set up one or more of the following: an ERA that enables pricing to vary for the same
service based on a specific attribute; a supplementary GSM telco service, such as call
forwarding; or a bearer service or other telco service extension.

purchase event
An event that generates a one-time fee, such as an installation fee. A purchase event
is one of the event types you can include in the service-event map when you create a
charge offer.

purchase fee
A one-time charge, such as an installation fee.

quantity range
A pricing element that enables you to vary charge or discount pricing based on level
of usage or frequency of occurrence. You can configure a different balance impact for
each range. For example, a charge for a telephony service might contain the following
quantity ranges based on the total duration of calls during a month: No Minimum to
500 minutes, 500 to 1000 minutes, and 1000 minutes to No Maximum.

quantity range basis

The amount that a quantity range is based on. For example, for a quantity range from
0–60 minutes, the quantity range basis is minutes.

quantity range expression

A discount expression that PDC uses to select one discount quantity range or more
to use to calculate a discount. The result of the expression is the currency amount
or event quantity to consider for discounting (the quantity range basis). The quantity
range expression is specified at the top of the Pricing Details section in a discount rule.

queuing
A mechanism used by a Data Manager (DM) and some client applications to reduce
the number of connections to the database.

RADIUS Gateway
An ECE component that serves as the OCS front-end server for the BRM system
that processes an authentication and accounting request from a RADIUS client. It acts
as a RADIUS server and presents BRM Elastic Charging Engine to the network as
a RADIUS application. It translates a RADIUS request received from RADIUS clients

Glossary-53
 Glossary

into ECE Java API requests. It translates the response from Elastic Charging Server
back into RADIUS requests and responds back to the requesting RADIUS client.

ratable usage metric (RUM)

A set of information used by BRM to measure an event. The information includes the
units to measure (such as minutes or kilobytes) and how to calculate the measurement
(for example, subtract the event's start time from its end time).

rated event
An event that has been rated by ECE or by a BRM opcode.

See also prerated event.

Rated Event (RE) Formatter

An ECE process that formats an event and submits it to the Rated Event (RE) Loader.

Rated Event (RE) Publisher

An ECE process that publishes a rated event to an Oracle NoSQL Database where
they are temporarily stored before they are loaded into the BRM database.

Rated Event (RE) Loader

Application that loads a rated event into the BRM database. It includes two utilities:
pin_rel loads a prerated event, and pin_rerel loads prerated events that have been
rerated.

rating
A process that calculates how much to charge customers for the use of a service.
Rating is performed on an event. To rate an event, BRM does the following:

1. Measures the event.

2. Applies a charge amount to the resulting measurement.

real time
Instantaneously. For example, with online charging, BRM rates in real time so that a
customer's account balance reflects the charges for service usage as it occurs.

reason code
An identification number that indicates the reason why the following events have
occurred in the BRM system:

Glossary-54
 Glossary

• An adjustment such as a charge, debit, or refund was made to an account or

service.

• A suspended payment was recycled to or from suspense.

• An unallocatable payment was removed from the BRM system.

These codes are configured in the reasons.en_US file. BRM accesses the string
values for a reason code and displays it in applications. When a CSR makes
changes to each account, they can select a reason code for the adjustment. See
reasons.locale.

reasons.locale
A configuration file that contains a localized reason code and a G/L ID. The locale is
indicated by the file suffix (for example, reasons.en_US).

recurring charge
An ongoing charge that is not generated or affected by usage, such as a monthly
subscription fee.

recurring event discount

A discount that applies to a recurring charge.

recycle key
A string added to an event that is stored by BRM during rating interruptions. When
the rating interruption is over, you use the pin_recycle program to search for and
rate all events with the recycle key. Recycle keys are added to events by programs
such as triggered-billing and Account Migration Manager (AMM) that initiate rating
interruptions.

recycled payment
A payment that has moved back and forth between the payment suspense account
and one or more customers' account. Recycled payments have been reversed from
a source account and applied to a destination account due to payment suspense
processing.

refund
A payment made to a customer. Refunds return existing credit in the customer's
account to the customer.

Glossary-55
 Glossary

refund item
An A/R item that includes the amount that you owe to a customer.

request
One type of connection to a BRM database. The other is a transaction. A request is a
read operation that is not part of a transaction. A request does not require that the data
remain the same for the duration of the connection.

request for response (RFR) file

A file used by Paymentech to recover a failed credit card transaction.

rerate job
A combination of /job/rerate and /job_batch/rerate objects in the BRM database that
store information about the account and event selected for rerating and about the
status of the rerating process.

There is a one-to-one correlation between /job/rerate and /job_batch/rerate objects

and they are created in the same transaction.

rerate reason code

An identification number assigned to a rerate job that indicates the reason why rerating
has been requested.

You can assign unique rerate a reason code to rerate jobs by customizing automatic
rerating or by using the pin_rerate utility.

rerating
The process in which the balance impact of an event is recalculated so that pricing
changes or corrections can be retroactive. Rerating reevaluates a previously rated
event based on modified charge attributes, such as changes in pricing configurations,
account attributes, charge offer attributes, and so on. Rerating can be done for a
usage event and transaction calculated during a billing run, such as a cycle fee, fold,
and so on.

Revenue Assurance Center

The application you use to search for and display revenue assurance data.

revenue assurance data

Data that BRM collects to verify the accuracy of revenue producing operations.

Glossary-56
 Glossary

Revenue Assurance Manager

An optional component used to obtain revenue assurance data.

reversed payment
A payment whose effect on the customer's account balance in the BRM database
has been undone. For example, if a customer makes a credit card payment that is
recorded in the database but the payment cannot be deposited because of an expired
credit card, the payment can be reversed. The net balance impact of a payment and
its reversal is zero (0).

roaming
Use of a mobile network by a customer who is a subscriber to a different mobile
network.

roaming agreement
An agreement that defines the terms under which a roaming partner provides a
roaming service to each other's customers, and how to manage a settlement of
roaming financials.

roaming partner
An agreement between service providers to provide roaming services and an
exchange usage charge.

role
A specific permission set that determine what a customer service representative (CSR)
can and cannot do with BRM applications. You assign CSRs to roles based on the
tasks they perform.

rollover charge
A charge that extends the validity of an unused balance to succeeding cycles. For
example, minutes are often rolled over.

root account
An account created during installation that provides general access permission to the
BRM system. This account includes a service pair, admin_client and pcm_client,
used by BRM applications. System administrators use this account to create accounts
and set permissions for a CSR.

Glossary-57
 Glossary

RUM
See ratable usage metric (RUM).

scheduled execution
Execution of a batch handler at specified times. See also metronomic execution.

secondary currency
See primary currency.

secondary database schema

In multischema systems, a database schema that contains subscriber data, such
as an event and account object. Each secondary schema also has access to the
configuration, pricing, audit trail, and uniqueness objects stored in the primary schema.

secondary installation machine

In multischema systems, a machine that contains a secondary DM and connects to a
secondary database schema.

security code
A code used by a CSR to verify that the customer calling is the owner of the specified
account. Security codes are chosen by customers, for example, the customer's social
security number or the maiden name of the customer's mother.

A security code is also called an access code.

selector
A pricing component that contains a set of rules that enable the same charge offer
or discount offer that apply a different balance impact based on event attributes. For
example, a charge selector can determine which charge to use based on the call's
origin and destination recorded in events.

Self-Care Manager
The BRM Web-based customer self-care application. Self-Care Manager enables
customers to log into their accounts and view their account and charge offer
information by using a Web browser. You can customize the appearance of the default
Web pages by modifying Java Server Pages (JSPs).

Glossary-58
 Glossary

server
An instance of a BRM server process (CM or DM).

service
A commodity sold by your company that your customers can purchase and use, such
as a mobile phone or broadband Internet connection. When customers use a service,
they generate an event, which you use to determine how much to charge customers.

service class
An internal code that represents a variation on a service, for example, the quality of
service for GPRS, or a telephone service used only for emergency calls.

service code
An internal code that represents a type of service, for example, telephony or GPRS.

service establishment
See merchant number.

service-event map
A setup component that lists each service in your system to which a charge offer can
apply. For each service, the map specifies which event can have a charge configured
for that service. The map also specifies the an RUM to use for each service-event pair.

service group
A group of one service or more defined in a package, consisting of one subscription
service and one member service or more. For example, if the subscription service is
GSM, the member services could be Voice and SMS.

Member services can benefit from a discount owned by the subscription service. They
can also be associated with a device owned by the subscription service. Customers
can purchase the set of services as a group.

service integration component

An optional component that integrates BRM with an external system; for example
LDAP Manager or GSM Manager.

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service balance group

A balance group that you add to an account to track a balance for one specific service
or more.

service life cycle

A set of statuses or states and status or state transitions through which a service
passes from its initial status or state to its final status or state. By default, all BRM
service types use the default service life cycle, which has three statuses: Active,
Inactive, and Closed. The default life cycle cannot be customized.

If you need a life cycle that better represents the phases of a particular service type,
create a custom service life cycle for that service type. BRM includes a sample prepaid
service life cycle that has the following states: Preactive, Active, Recharge Only, Credit
Expired, Dormant, Fraud Investigated, Suspended, and Closed.

See also service state and service status.

service password
A password for a service.

See also account password.

service state
A service attribute that determines the level of activity that a customer can perform
with a service that uses a custom service life cycle. For example, the sample prepaid
service life cycle has the following states: Preactive, Active, Recharge Only, Credit
Expired, Dormant, Fraud Investigated, Suspended, and Closed.

See also service life cycle and service status.

service status
A service attribute that determines the level of activity that a customer can perform
with a service that uses the default service life cycle, which has the following status:

• Active: The customer can perform normal service activity.

• Inactive: The customer is restricted from using the service, usually because a
credit limit was exceeded or a bill was not paid. inactive status implies that the
customer will use the service again in the future.

• Closed: The customer is restricted from using the service. closed status implies
that the customer will not use the service again.

See also account status, service life cycle, and service state.

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session
An event that spans a period of time, such as a telephone call or an Internet
connection.

settlement
An item that records the settlement of a dispute of the currency or a noncurrency
balance in a customer's account. A settlement can grant the customer's dispute in part
or full. A settlement can also deny the dispute, resulting in no change to the balances.

setup component
In PDC, a component that contains data used to create a pricing component. Setup
components include a balance element, impact category, RUM, the service-event
map, special day calendar, and zone model. See also pricing component.

shadow event
An event created during rerating. While rerating events, a shadow event gets recorded
for unbilled events or events for which the GL has not been posted yet. The shadow
event has a complement of each balance impact from the original event and new
balance impact as a result of rerating. This shadow event is of the same type as the
original event being rerated and is recorded at the same time as the original event.

sharing group owner account

The account that pays each shared charge incurred by a charge sharing group
member account or the account that shares a selected discountwith a discount sharing
group member account. Owner accounts receive charges eligible for charge sharing
from member accounts immediately after the event generating the charges occurs. An
account can own multiple discount and a charge sharing group.

SIM Administration Center

An application used for creating and managing an inventory of SIM cards in the BRM
system.

SIM Manager
BRM server components that support managing SIM card inventory.

simulator
An ECE utility used that emulates the role of a network mediation software program
sending a request to ECE.

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SM
See Storage Manager.

snowball discount
A type of billing-time discount that distributes a percentage discount to all accounts
in a discount sharing group. A discount sharing group allows one account (the group
owner) to share discounts with other accounts (the group members).

See discount sharing.

soft decline
A credit card status that indicates a temporary condition, such as exceeding a credit
limit.

soft descriptors
A data field in the Paymentech DM configuration file (BRM_home/sys/dm_fusa./
pin.conf) that enable you to display the following information about your customer's
checking account or credit card statement:

• The name under which you do business (your DBA name)

• charge offer name

• Customer service number on your customer's checking account or credit card

statement

This feature is available with Paymentech credit-card or direct-debit processing.

soft parsing
Making use of a prior parsing efforts for commonly used SQL statements, to avoid
the performance impact of parsing the same statements repetitively. BRM statement
caching eliminates the need for Oracle soft parsing.

source file
A file created and edited by programmers that is compiled into a software program or
program component.

special day calendar

A set of dates, such as holidays, for which you want to charge a special price for your
service. To configure pricing for special days in a charge, you associate a special day
calendar with a time period in a time model. Special day calendars were called holiday
calendars in previous BRM releases.

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split revenue assurance data

Data collected in Revenue Assurance Manager by breaking up the total-revenue-billed
data into various categories by billing segment or DOM. The split revenue assurance
data is collected using the pin_bill_accts utility.

sponsored top-up
A top-up made from one account's debit balance to another account's debit or credit
balance. For example, a mother can top up her child's account balance with a $50
payment from her account.

For account A to top up account B, account A must be the sponsored top-up group
owner account of a sponsored top-up group, and account B must be a member
account of that group.

sponsored top-up group

An account group that consists of one sponsored top-up group owner account and one
member account or more. A member account receives a top-up from the group owner
account.

See also sponsored top-up.

sponsored top-up group owner account

An account that owns a /group/topup object. A sponsored top-up group owner
account can make top-ups to another account that become a member account of its
group.

See also sponsored top-up.

standard recycling
The process of identifying, fixing, and resubmitting failed event records.

standard top-up
A top-up that a customer makes to his or her own account. For example, a customer
can add 100 minutes to the balance associated with his mobile phone service.

statement handle
A descriptor that identifies an SQL statement that has been sent to the database
management system.

The BRM use of the term handle differs from the standard programming term handle,
which means "a pointer to a pointer."

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status
The state of an account, service, or charge offer.

The status of an account or service can be active, inactive, or closed. The status of
a charge offer can be active, inactive, or canceled. See account status and service
status.

storable class
The system definition of an object that contains all structural and behavioral
information about the object. Classes do not contain actual data; they are object
definitions.

See also subclass.

Storable Class Editor

An application in Developer Center that you use to create and modify a storable class
and field. Storable Class Editor displays the hierarchy of storable classes and fields
in the data dictionary. It can also generate the C and Java source file needed to use
custom fields with BRM applications.

Storage Manager
A back-end Data Manager (DM) process that translates BRM operations into the
language of the data access system. Each DM has a front end that communicates with
CMMP and a back end that communicates with a data access system. You can write
your own Storage Manager to translate BRM operations to another database.

sub-balance
A portion of a balance that is valid for a specified amount of time. For example, a
balance of minutes might include a sub-balance of 300 minutes that are valid only for
the current month and a sub-balance of 1000 minutes that never expire.

subclass
A class derived from a storable class. For example, /event/activity is a subclass of
the /event storable class.

subordinate bill unit

See nonpaying bill unit.

subscription charge offer

A charge offer owned by a subcriber, with a charge that apply only to the subscriber
who owns the charge offer, as opposed to a system charge offer that applies to
all subscribers. Subscription charge offers can contain fees for any event type and

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combination, including one-time, recurring, usage, rollover, and fold. Most charge
offers are subscription charge offers.

subscription service
The service in a service group that is subscribed to, as opposed to the member
service. For example, the subscription service could be GSM, and the member
services could be Voice and SMS.

substruct
A type of field (PIN_FLDT_SUBSTRUCT) that consists of a set of named fields of any
type, similar to an array. Unlike an array, there is exactly one instance of a substruct
within an object. Substructs do not have element IDs like arrays; instead, they are fully
identified by the field name in an object.

supplementary service
A feature added to a basic GSM service that enhances the basic service. Examples
are call forwarding and call blocking.

suppressed account
An account with a service and charge offer that is inactive and whose bills are
suppressed. Optionally, a charge associated with one account bundle can accumulate
in suppressed accounts.

suppressed bill
A bill that is not finalized at the end of its billing cycle but is instead extended for
another full billing cycle. The charge generated during the original billing cycle will not
age, get invoiced, go into collections, or have a payment due date set for them until
the bill is unsuppressed.

Suspended Event (SE) Loader

Application used by Suspense Manager to load a failed event into the BRM database.

suspended payment
A payment that does not meet payment criteria and requires evaluation by a payment
specialist before it can be posted to the correct account.

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Suspense Manager
A BRM component that manages and recycles failed event records. Suspense
Manager includes the Suspense Management Center GUI application to analyze, edit,
recycle, test recycle, write off, archive, and delete failed call records.

system charge offer

A charge offer that applies to all customers. For example, you could create a system
charge offer to charge a default usage fee of $0.10 per minute for all your customers
when no other charge offer is valid.

System charge offers can be used only with a usage event.

system currency
The default currency for the BRM system, typically the currency used by your business
for a financial transaction. Your customers in other countries can use a different
currency as their account currency.

system discount
A type of discount offer that is applied to each account in the system. For example,
you can use a system discount offer to discount each item purchased during a holiday
period.

system process
The BRM system consists of a number of system processes that are always running,
for example, Connection Manager (CM) and Data Manager (DM).

tax code
A code that indicates which tax rate to apply based on the type of charge offer, such
as a subscription or a physical commodity. You map tax codes to a tax-calculation
package, which calculate the tax on the charge offers, or to custom tax rates that you
define.

tax exemption
The percentage of a taxable amount that a customer is exempt from paying. For
example, some customers are exempt from paying part of local government taxes. If
a customer has a 20% exemption, taxes are calculated based on 80% of the total
amount.

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tax jurisdiction
The government entity that charges a tax, for example, local, state, or federal.

tax nexus
A method of determining if a company pays state taxes. A company has a tax nexus
if it does business within a state, for example, by maintaining an office, leasing
telephone lines, or sending in sales representatives regularly.

tax supplier
A company or company division responsible for collecting taxes. Taxes can be
calculated differently depending on the location of the tax supplier.

temporary balance
A balance used when you need the results of one discount to calculate another
discount.

You specify a temporary balance ID when you set up a discount balance

impact. You reference a temporary balance by using the discount expression
EBal(event_balance_ID). You can reference a temporary balance in a discount rule,
discount trigger, and discount balance impact.

testnap
An application used by developers to test custom applications and to read and
manipulate data in the BRM database.

Third-Party software
Software that enables you to install a BRM software package that uses the
InstallShield MultiPlatform (ISMP) installation method. The software includes the Perl
libraries and JRE required for ISMP installation.

time model
A time period set. Each time period contains one or more time segments. A time
segment represents a particular time, such as a day of the week or a range of several
hours. You use time models to charge different prices for the same service depending
on the day and time the service is used.

time period
In rating, a time range for one or more days in a week. For example, one time period
might cover 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., Monday-Friday.

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Time periods are defined by a combination of a day code and a time interval. You
include time periods in a time model.

topology file
An ECE file (ECE_home/oceceserver/config/eceTopology.conf) that describes each
ECE node in the Coherence cluster. The topology file defines the name, role, physical
host, and JVM tuning file preference for each node. ECE reads your topology file to
know where all of the nodes of the cluster are located.

top-up
An asset amount, such as $50 or 100 minutes, that is a credit to an account balance.
An account balance can be topped up manually by a CSR or customer self-care tool or
automatically by BRM.

transaction
A connection to the database that requires that the data being read or written must not
change during the connection.

transaction caching
Temporary storage of a transaction object in the CM to avoid having to read them
from the database multiple times. The PCM_OPFLG_CACHEABLE flag enables
transaction caching.

transaction ID
A unique identifier generated by BRM for each payment, payment reversal, and
refund. BRM uses transaction IDs internally to manage A/R , for example, to identify a
payment that needs to be reversed or to identify a failed payment for application of a
payment fee.

For an online payment and refund, the transaction ID also identifies the transaction
that occurred between BRM and the external processor, such as Paymentech.

For payments that have been recycled due to suspense, the subtransaction ID is equal
to the transaction ID of the payment's original payment.

transactional payment
An BRM-initiated payment that occurs in its entirety in one communication session
between BRM and a payment processing service. The communication session is
bidirectional and occurs entirely online. By default, all BRM-initiated payments are
processed this way.

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See also nontransactional payment.

transfer
To move an amount from one bill item, payment item, or payment refund item to
another.

transition rule
A rule that filters the list of available options presented to a customer during
the purchase process. You can define bundle-to-bundle and package-to-package
transition rules in PDC.

two-phase commit process

A process comprising the following phases, which ensure that all data stores
(resources) involved in an extended architecture (XA) transaction remains
synchronized:

• Phase 1: Prepare. After verifying whether its data store is accessible and the
changes can be successfully committed, each participating resource manager
votes either to commit or to roll back the transaction.

• Phase 2: Commit. If all participating resource managers vote to commit, the

transaction manager instructs them to finalize the operation. If one or more vote
to roll back, all participating resources are instructed to roll back the prepared
changes.

See also XA transaction.

type-only POID
A special type of POID that specifies the database and type of an object without
specifying the unique ID number. You can use type-only POIDs to perform actions on
all objects of the same type, such as each account or service of a specific type.

In a type-only POID, the number -1 takes the place of the object ID:

0.0.0.1 /device/sim -1

UMS
See Universal Message Store (UMS).

unbilled revenue
Revenue from a charge that have not been included in a bill, such as usage fees that
have been accrued, but not billed. An unbilled item becomes billed at the end of the
customer's billing cycle. See also billed revenue.

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Unbilled revenue is tracked by running a general ledger (G/L) report.

unconfirmed payment
A BRM-initiated payment that was posted as successful by the payment DM before
confirmation from the bank or payment processor. You must create a custom payment
DM to enable unconfirmed payment processing.

unearned revenue
Revenue that has not been earned at the time that a general ledger (G/L) report is run.
Unearned revenue only applies to revenue from a cycle forward fee. See also earned
revenue.

Unicode
A 16-bit universal character encoding. Unicode applications can display characters
from several different languages. You use Unicode when you have customers in
multiple countries.

units of measurement
An attribute of a ratable usage metric (RUM) that defines what to measure. For
example, to rate duration, you might specify seconds or minutes. To measure bytes,
you might specify megabytes or kilobytes.

Universal Message Store (UMS)

A framework that enables you to include system-generated messages in customer
documents such as an invoice.

usage charge
A charge for the use of a service, such as telephone calls or text messages.

usage class
In rating, an internal code that represents a secondary service, for example, call
forwarding.

usage event
An event generated by service usage. Usage events are rated based on how much the
service is used.

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usage item
A bill item that includes balance impacts from a usage fee, purchase fee, cycle arrears
fee, and cancel fee. These fees are stored in the /item/misc object.

An /item/misc object is created for each account, and for every service that the
account owns. This enables you to manage fees for each service independently (for
example, you can display the usage fees for separate telephony services).

usage request
A request sent to ECE from client applications, such as network mediation software
programs, to charge usage of a service by a customer.

usage response
A response from ECE to the client application that sent a usage request

usage scenario (USC) selector

A selector that determines the appropriate impact category for a differentiated network
service, such as a mailbox inquiry, call forwarding, and a friends-and-family discount.
After a user selects a zone model, a USC selector is run to filter the zone impact
categories based on the values of USC-related attributes. USC selectors were called
USC groups in previous BRM releases.

validate
1. To make sure that information is entered correctly, for example, that a phone
number has the correct number of digits.

2. To make sure that a credit card is valid.

By default, credit card validation checks the card holder's name and address.

value map
A hierarchical structure that associates zone names with values that apply to a single
event attribute, such as an area code, an IP address, or a broadband bit rate. You
use value maps in a charge selector to group event attribute values into manageable
categories. Value maps were called zone maps in previous BRM releases.

vanity flag
A telephone number attribute that can be used to rate the number differently from
other numbers.

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Vertex
The company that produces Communications Tax Q Series, which calculates
telecommunications taxation, and Sales Tax Q Series, which calculates tax for sales
and use. BRM supports both of those Vertex programs.

Vertex Manager
An optional component that integrates BRM with the Vertex Communications Tax Q
Series and Sales Tax Q Series software.

warning
An indication that BRM cannot perform a task because of incorrect or inconsistent
data in the database. The system can still operate properly, but you should check and
resolve the data problem immediately. BRM displays warnings in a log file.

welcome message
An email message sent to customers after they have created an account.

write-off
A transaction that removes an uncollectable accounts receivable (A/R) from a
customer's account so it is not considered as an asset for accounting purposes.

written-off state
The event record state that indicates that a suspended call record will not be recycled.

XA transaction
A group of operations implemented as a single transaction involving multiple data
stores (resources) on multiple network hosts. Each data store is represented by a
resource manager (such as JCA Resource Adapter), and the transaction is presided
over by a global transaction manager. To ensure that all data stores involved in an
XA transaction remain synchronized, each data store must participate in a two-phase
commit process.

Also called a distributed transaction or a global transaction.

See also two-phase commit process.

Zone Mapper
The BRM application you use to create a zone and organize them into a value map.

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zone model
A setup component used to charge for calls based on their origin and destination.
BRM supports the following types of zone models:

• Standard: A zone model based on the origin and destination numbers of a call. It
contains rules that associate a pair of origin and destination numbers with a zone
impact category.

• Geographic: A zone model based on the distance between the origin and the
destination of a call.

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