第二屆離島資訊技術與應用研討會，2002 年 6 月
A Web Technology and Distributed Object Computing Based
Telecommunication Provisioning System
Chin-Yao Yang Chee-Wen Chen Chia-Hao Hsueh Ya-Mei Chen
Chia-Chen Lee
Yao-Te Huang Wen-Cheng Sheu Teh-Sheng Huang
Jain-Feng Tsai
Hong-Jang Wu
Telecommunication Laboratory
ChungHwa Telecommunication Co. Taiwan
E-mail: yangjy@cht.com.tw
Abstract
For past decades, the computing techniques affect our society,
but web will deeply affect it in the future. Web based systems
deliver a complex content and functionality in heterogeneous
environment This paper presents web engineering, distributed
object computing techniques to develop complex and
heterogeneous
telecom
provisioning
system
under
telecommunication management network hierarchy and
telecommunication operations map architecture. In this paper,
we propose a common objects request broker architecture
(CORBA) and Factory models to improve the performance of
web based distributed object computing system. As a result, we
could verify the usefulness of these approaches not only for
telecom service provisioning process but also for telecom
network management process.
Figure 1. A TMN hierarchy
TMN management functions provide a structure and
decomposition of function for all of the layers [14]. However,
it is not enough to guide service provider and network
operators to construct end-to-end interoperable process
automatically across layers. Therefore, the Telecom Operations
Map (TOM), proposed by TM Forum, employing TMN model
as a foundation, addresses operations support and management
for any communications service from a top down, end-to-end
process and customer’s oriented standpoint. The TOM is as
shown in Figure 2.
1. Introduction
Due to the rapid growth of the Internet, the Internet has given
drastic influence and impact to the enterprise information
applications. There is a high demand for development of highly
reliable, high quality and easily maintainable distributed object
computing system in a wide range of application domains [1].
The applications may be from tele-education and
telecommunication, e-commerce, and multimedia [1][2][3][4].
Web based systems now deliver a complex array of content and
functionality. Many web systems have failed or the possibilities
for major failures. The primary causes of these failures are with
a flawed design, development process and poor management of
development efforts-not technology [18]. Also, web’s content,
structure, and functionality will evolve over time [18].
Therefore, there needs an engineering approach and a new
evolutional development process to develop web systems.
As the leading service provider in Taiwan, ChungHwa
Telecom.(CHT) is facing an ever-increasing competition and a
market experiencing dramatic change at an unprecedented rate.
CHT has to be struggling to move from a manual-intensive,
inflexible operational environment to one that provides web
enabled, service quality, cost, and time to markets. Fortunately,
there is a Telecommunication Management Network (TMN)
hierarchy could be referenced as a high level
telecommunication. operation model as follows.
There are several heterogeneous operational supporting
systems (OSS) in Telecomm. Sectors [5][6]. And, they need a
number of heterogeneous OSS to collaborate and support
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provisioning system. In this paper, we propose CORBA,
multithread model, and Factory models to develop and
implement it.
offered to users, the layout is the way the content is formatted
for presentation, and the business logic is the functionality
necessary for dynamic interaction with users. Furthermore, we
follow the concept of Web engineering [17], which has many
important and distinguishing characteristics of a web based
application. They include some underlying principles of
graphic design, document and link management, influences of
hypertext and hypermedia, network, evolving standards, and
web performance. It raises a potential worldwide user base,
possibilities in end user computing, and evolutional system
development. This introduces a new variable of
popularity-durability of the application [17]. Understanding
users requirements becomes much more complicated than it
was before. Therefore, a new development process model is
required for web based application. The proposed web
development process is as follows Figure 4.
Figure 2. A Telecom Operations Map
This paper is partial research works of the TOPS/ABG project
[7] at Chung-Hwa Telecommunication Laboratory. The project
mainly studies to provide a web-based, distributed,
object-based and interoperability-based framework to make up
the end-to-end process flows for Fulfillment, Assurance and
Billing across the process layers of TOM, and enable
end-to-end process automation of telecom service operations
processes. A typical telecom fixed network service as follows.
Figure 4. A Web system development model
For contents, presentations, and functionalities of major parts
of requirements, the development model is an iterative and
revolution processes. Also, it is an important paradigm and
activities in Web techniques.
3 CORBA
In general, web based distributed system is in distinction from
traditional client server architecture. Three-tier client server
architecture provides a flexible platform and a thin client [10].
It is suitable to web based and distributed object system, and
Internet applications.
OMG proposed CORBA to be promoted as a distributed object
standard architecture. Recently, CORBA is considered broadly
as a feasible and effective common software infrastructure for
integrating several heterogeneous systems in the Internet and
the Intranet computing environment. CORBA basic
architecture is illustrated in Figure 5.
Figure 3. A typical fixed network service
The rest of this paper is structured as follow. Section 2
describes concepts of web engineering regards as the
framework of developing web based system. We present a
distributed object model based distributed system for our
experimental implementation in section 3. Section 4 expresses
a significant mechanism to alleviate the performance of web
based distributed object system. Section 5 examines a telecom
service provisioning system regards as experimental case study
in our research project. Section 6 gives our concluding and
future work.
2. Web development model
For long time, some systems development methodologies
dominate discussions. But, web system consists of content,
layout, and business logic [16]. The content is the information
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thread for each request In particular, threads are pre-produced
and exist in thread polling objects. The number of threads may
be given by system. System fetches a thread from a thread poll
to service a request when client initials a request. And, the
thread will move back the thread pool after the request is
executed. This policy should enhance the performance of
CORBA based distributed object system.

Factory model
In general, a life cycle of an object is from creating, naming,
triggering and stop, it always occurs in application server.
When the number of CORBA objects is numerous, it should
affect system performance. Moreover, that will cause less easy
for system maintenance. For system needs to be more flexible,
it is necessary to be able to produce CORBA objects
dynamically in application server such as in Figure 6.
When each client wants to invoke server objects that must call
Factory object to produce dynamically CORBA server objects.
It will produce a new server object if there is not a suitable
server object. A server object is used and return it’s reference
value if it exists. Virtually, this model makes clients not only
do control the server objects but also server can be protected.
However, Factory model provides an object management
scheme to manage objects. Factory model uses Hash table or
Directory data structure to manage server objects.
Figure 5. Basic CORBA Architecture
Without knowing where CORBA objects are, client requests
can invoke CORBA server objects just know the names of
server objects and what services they can provide. In fact,
requests pass arguments and data to a Stub (i.e. client agent for
CORBA objects). Then, Stub objects should do data
marshalling and pass requests to a remote counterpart (i.e. it is
called Skeleton in server side) through ORB (Object Request
Broker) and IIOP (Internet Inter-ORB Protocol). The Skeleton
transfers the received data and invokes a CORBA object,
which can provide service for the client request. Finally, the
Skeleton returns the results to Stub in above same way.
Therefore, the distributed object computing paradigm of
request-invocation-service-return model is transparent.
The advantages of CORBA server component can be executed
in diverse platforms and can be implemented by various
languages. Together, they specify load balance and fail over
capabilities. The load balance mechanism is client requests can
be coordinately distributed to the respond server objects in
various application servers to reduce skew system loading. On
the other hand, the fail over scheme is when an application
server is down, requests can automatically switch to another
server to be executed.
4. Performance
Conventionally, there is a naive interaction method between
client and server. Client inevitably has to wait till server
response after issuing request. Doubtlessly, this method is
inefficiency. However, there is an alternative method that is a
thread method. Client is used to produce a thread for executing
a request for server, and may go ahead to complete its work till
server response without waiting such as a naïve interaction. An
execution in client is more efficient and flexible than the
above.
However, the sever side, there are some thread policies. For
examples, thread per session policy, thread pooling policy, and
factory model.

Figure 6. A multithread and factory Models
This paper adopts the threading and Factory mechanisms [12]
to enhance the web system. The architecture of CORBA with
multi-threading model and Factory object had showed
concurrent different jobs to be executed independently, and
improve the performance of overall web based distributed
object computing system.
5. Case Study
The case study is a telecom service provisioning system. The
system architecture is a web enable, three tier and CORBA
based distributed object computing that is the kernel of
telecommunication service and configuration provisioning
system in TOPS/ABG project. Following the Web development
process, the telecom web system is not only carefully
Thread-per-session policy
The thread-per-session policy means that there is a unique
thread for per client.

Thread pooling policy
A thread pooling policy means that it exists a correspondent
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developed but also is a well-design system with UML,
CORBA, and distributed object computing techniques.
Generally speaking, client adopts Chinese version Windows 95,
Windows 98 or NT Workstation. Application server adopts
Chinese version NT Server and database adopts Unix
workstation to run relational database engine.
proposed web system development approach, UML, distributed
object computing technology and the telecom provisioning
system are all partial research works in our TOPS/ABG
project.
We could extend or migrate the proposed approach or
methodology to support network development, network
provisioning, network inventory, and network maintenance and
restoration in network and system management process, which
is another important part in TOM and TMN, and is our future
work.
In requirement and design process, we employ use case to
describe web application user requirements and employ class
diagram, sequence diagram, state transition diagram to express
the scenarios of the web system.
We adopt VisiBroker to develop the kernel of CORBA
middleware and to provide object interoperability between
client and application server through IIOP protocol. Together,
we use Rapid Application Development (RAD), C++ and Java
Applet to develop Web and CORBA based distributed object
system
[8][9][11].
An
implementation
of
the
telecommunication provisioning system in our research project
is illustrated in Figure 7.
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6. Conclusion and future works
In this paper, we have presented web development model,
distributed object computing mechanisms, and the design and
the implementation of a case study of a telecom provisioning
system in TOM and TMN. The proposed system is for order
handling and problem handling in a customer case process,
service development, service configuration, and service quality
management in a service development and service quality
process in ChungHwa Telecom. Also, It is operated in Intranet
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