INTEGRATED DATA-MODEL AND FLOW BASED POLICY SYSTEM

• US 20090083408A1
• Filed: 09/20/2007
• Published: 03/26/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/20/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Flash Networks, Ltd. (Constellation Software Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Flash Networks, Ltd. (Constellation Software Incorporated)
• Inventors: Kalish, Danny, Diamant, Zvika, Hecht, Jacob
• Granted Patent: US 8,972,518 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/223
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

Disclosed is a system for managing policies related to services offered to customers of network and service providers. The system enables operators and service providers to efficiently manage and define generic policies on top of their services via a code-free centralized interface. The infrastructure solution enables the operators, subscribers and application providers to define and enforce their service policies for each application, such as access control, charging schemes, privacy, campaign promotions, cross-selling and up-selling and mobile advertising, from one central point on top of all services and resources. Once integrated, no additional programming is required to create new policies or modify existing policies. The disclosed system enables operators to easily view and manage the data related to their business entities, such as services, handsets, subscribers and the like, and define the associated policies. The system allows defining policies on any type of service, traffic type or policy domain.

Claims

1. A policy management system for handling requests within data communication and service networks, wherein said handling includes identifying and evaluating request and activating and enforcing flow based or rule based scenarios, in relations to internal and external events said system comprises:

a data model for defining data objects structure and relations, wherein said definition includes at least one of the following;

data objects properties, relations of said data objects to other data objects, data sources of said data objects and access policies of said data objects;

a flow design and execution engine for defining policy logic, conditions and actions of flows, applied on said external events wherein the flow is an ordered set of actions and directives structuring the steps to be taken in order to accomplish a given task;

a context management module providing relevant context data based on said data model to said flows according to its current state and context.

2. The system of claim 1 further including a management user interface for inserting and editing the data of data entities in said data model.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein said data is stored in a persistent data store.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein said persistent data store is at least one of the following:

a relational database, a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) repository.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the context data defined by said model is stored in system memory.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein said context data is shared by at least one of the following:

all the system, single server, user session.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the context data defined by said model is stored for each flow.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the context data defined by said model is stored in at least one of the following:

the persistent store of the system, an external persistent data store.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the context data defined by said model is cached by the system.

10. The system of claim 1 further including an end-user user interface for defining policies that use the data model elements.

11. The system of claim 1 wherein the information of said data model is available to said policy flow designer.

12. The system of claim 1 wherein entity types of said data model are types in the policy flow language.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein said entity types include their properties and referenced entities.

14. The system of claim 12 further comprising assignment statements that manipulate the data entities directly.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein said manipulation is performed in at least one of the following:

in the internal memory of said system;

in the internal database of the system or in an external database.

16. The system of claim 1 wherein data entities of said data model are literals in the policy flow language.

17. A policy management method for handling requests within data communication and service networks, wherein said handling includes identifying and evaluating request and activating and enforcing flow based or rule based scenarios, in relations to internal and external events, said method comprising the steps of:

defining data object types through a data model, wherein said definition includes at least one of the following;

data objects properties, relations of said data objects to other data objects, data sources of said data objects and access policies of said data objects;

defining policy logic, conditions and actions of flows through a flow design and execution engine, applied on said external events wherein the flow is an ordered set of actions and directives structuring the steps to be taken in order to accomplish a given task;

providing relevant context data from said data model to said flows through a context management module according to its current state and context.

18. The method of claim 17 further including the step of inserting and editing the data of data entities in said data model through a management user interface.

19. The method of claim 17 further including the step of providing the information of said data model to said policy flow designer.

20. The method of claim 17 wherein entity types of said data model are types in the policy flow language.

21. The method of claim 20 wherein said entity types include their properties and referenced entities.

22. The method of claim 17 wherein data entities of said data model are literals in the policy flow language.

23. The method of claim 17 wherein the context data is shared by at least one of the following:

all the system, single server, user session.

24. The method of claim 17 wherein the context data defined by said model is cached by the system.

25. The method of claim 17 further comprising the step of manipulating the data objects directly by assignment statements.