Welcome to the MATRIXX Software documentation, where you can find information about how to install, configure, and maintain a MATRIXX Digital Commerce environment. MATRIXX documentation uses the following conventions. For information about providing documentation feedback, and using or navigating through this documentation, see below.

These Release Notes provide information about new features, resolved issues, data changes, and known issues in MATRIXX Digital Commerce.

This section contains information about release version 5206 of the MATRIXX Digital Commerce software. For a list of hardware and software requirements, see Installation and Configuration.

This section contains information about release version 5205 of the MATRIXX Digital Commerce software. For a list of hardware and software requirements, see Installation and Configuration.

This section contains information about release version 5204 of the MATRIXX Digital Commerce software. For a list of hardware and software requirements, see Installation and Configuration.

This section contains information about release version 5203 of the MATRIXX Digital Commerce software. For a list of hardware and software requirements, see Installation and Configuration.

This section contains information about release version 5202 of the MATRIXX Digital Commerce software. For a list of hardware and software requirements, see Installation and Configuration.

This section contains information about release version 5201 of the MATRIXX Digital Commerce software. For a list of hardware and software requirements, see Installation and Configuration.

This section contains information about release version 5200 of the MATRIXX Digital Commerce software. This release is a limited access release for MATRIXX Services only.

Documentation for MATRIXX Digital Commerce is available online and in PDF format.

Architecture Overview provides information about the MATRIXX Digital Commerce™ functionality.

MATRIXX Digital Commerce is a real-time, transactional system designed to more efficiently support the growing volume and complexity of services that require real-time processing.

The MATRIXX Digital Commerce core components receive network messages, perform event-transaction processing, archive data needed for engine high-availability or disaster-recovery purposes, and publish or store event-transaction data for use by other systems.

MATRIXX Digital Commerce is designed for deployment in public, private, or hybrid clouds as an alternative to on-premise (bare metal) hardware deployment.

A MATRIXX Engine environment can include an active, a standby, and (optionally) a second standby engine. A MATRIXX Engine must have at least one backup engine, referred to as the standby engine or high-availability (HA) peer. A MATRIXX Engine and its configured standby peers together form an engine chain, which work together for disaster-recovery purposes. Should one engine fail, one of the standby(s) take over. For information about what happens when an active engine fails, see the discussion about disaster recovery.

MATRIXX Digital Commerce MATRIXX SBA Gateway provides a 5G interface for a Charging Server (OCS) and converged charging service (CCS) (including authorization and authentication), and is the consumer for Nchf_ConvergedCharging and Nchf_SpendingLimitControl for spending limit reporting. It is delivered as a Docker image or RPM file.

MATRIXX Digital Commerce Business API Gateway includes the RS (REST Services) Gateway and Gateway Proxy that translate REST and Java communication into the MDCs that the other MATRIXX components use to communicate. This gateway is implemented as a high-availability (HA) pair for reliability.

The MATRIXX Digital Commerce Traffic Routing Agents (TRAs) load-balance and route traffic among the MATRIXX Digital Commerce components and provide high availability (HA) protection. Depending on their function, the TRAs can also load balance traffic and serve as a Diameter peer. In addition to HA protection, TRAs also provide a single virtual IP address point of access for BSS systems and network nodes to send network traffic to.

In a MATRIXX environment where multiple customer sub-domains are implemented, the Route Cache (a database) is required in the traffic-routing layer.

The MATRIXX Digital Commerce SIGTRAN Network Enabler is a MATRIXX service that load balances TCAP messages across the MATRIXX Engine processing blades, which provides charging and balance control operations. In terms of RFC4666 (M3UA), each Network Enabler acts as a signaling gateway process (SGP) and the MATRIXX services on the processing blades act as application server processes (ASPs).

MATRIXX Digital Commerce is comprised of several applications that run seamlessly on one MATRIXX Engine to provide a total solution.

The Business API SDK is a framework that includes a set of tools to manage, customize and extend the RS Gateway for your business needs.

Used in environments in which the MATRIXX Event Streaming feature is enabled, or where event loading with MEFv2s is used, the Event Streaming Framework is a gateway that connects a MATRIXX Engine cluster to external systems that consume the event streams.

The MATRIXX™ Real-Time Engine software consists of a set of core software servers and one or more business modules. This is called a MATRIXX server (blade).

The MATRIXX Engine data model is object based. All objects are defined in XML, making them easily extendable and the in-memory databases highly configurable.

The MATRIXX Engine modules run on top of the MATRIXX Engine and contain the business logic for MATRIXX Telco applications.

MATRIXX Engine is designed to be deployed within a secure area of a carrier's network. In a simplistic picture, it can be viewed as a black box server with limited access points for event processing, business support systems, maintenance and monitoring, and local access.

MATRIXX uses a combination of industry standard clustering techniques as well as a proprietary technique to achieve both high availability and high scalability within the MATRIXX Engine.

MATRIXX Digital Commerce is designed to handle a range of possible disasters, including natural, technical, and human hazards. There is no decision making required during a disaster because the active engine is configured to automatically fail over to a standby engine that has the same built-in reliability and nearly-the-same transaction data.

Installation and Configuration provides information about the requirements and steps needed to install and configure the MATRIXX Digital Commerce software suite.

MATRIXX Digital Commerce has a set of installation requirements, which are summarized below with installation and setup procedures.

The servers running the MATRIXX Digital Commerce software must meet specific hardware, software, operating system and network requirements. In addition, certain third-party applications must be installed to run the MATRIXX Engine and measures must be taken to ensure the system is secure.

The MATRIXX Digital Commerce software is delivered in RPM Package Manager (RPM) files.

For production systems, the software must be installed on multiple blade servers that together form MATRIXX Engine. An environment can contain multiple engines for high availability. Installation prerequisites and instructions for installing the MATRIXX Engine software are provided below.

Install and set up the MATRIXX Gateways and Web Apps, including a secure communications channel to MATRIXX Engine. A production system can include more than one installation of the gateways and Web apps to facilitate high availability (HA).

Topics below provide information about how to install the Traffic Routing Agent (TRA) software.

Topics below provide information about how to install the Network Enabler software.

The Notification Server delivers notification messages to configured delivery channels and returns the notification message text and delivery ID to the Charging Server. Read on to learn how to install and set up the Notification Server.

MATRIXX Digital Commerce platform uses SBA Gateway to implement 5G network functions (NFs) and to enable 5G applications to communicate with MATRIXX. Use these procedures below to install and set up SBA Gateway.

You can customize the installation of MATRIXX Engine for a system that has not yet been deployed. Setup tasks include setting up business rules for MATRIXX Charging Application, MATRIXX Policy Application, and Call Control Framework (CCF). For information about changing the configuration of a running engine, see the discussion about changing the configuration of an engine.

The Gateway Proxy service facilitates communication with MATRIXX Engine and is installed with default logging behavior, connection, and security information that you can configure for your environment. You must also configure the Linux Firewall with a whitelist for accessing a MATRIXX Engine.

You must configure traffic routing for a new installation of MATRIXX Digital Commerce using the Traffic Routing Agent (TRA) servers. All TRA servers should be configured as clusters (HA pairs) to provide failover capabilities.

Configuring RS Gateway includes configuring the gateway to communicate with Gateway Proxy, configuring RS Gateway security, and configuring RS Gateway to connect to the Event Repository.

MATRIXX Engine supports high availability for the Notification Framework.

To enable notification messaging, you must configure the notification-specific global configuration questions during engine configuration, configure ActiveMQ, and configure the MATRIXX Notification Server. All components are required for publishing notifications to third-party systems. If you do not configure a JMS server address, notifications are published to MATRIXX Event Files (MEFs).

In a MATRIXX Digital Commerce environment where multiple customer sub-domains are implemented in separate engine chains, you configure sub-domain routing so that traffic is directed to the correct customer sub-domain where the subscriber is homed. You must configure different components across MATRIXX Digital Commerce for sub-domain routing to work.

Call Control Framework (CCF), which provides the communication services between Intelligent Networks and a MATRIXX Engine, is installed with default connection information that you can configure for your environment.

MATRIXX Network Enabler should be configured as a HA pair to provide failover capabilities.

The MATRIXX Engine can import and rate Solution42® CDRs and generate MATRIXX Event Detail Records (EDRs) from them. Generally, this is used only when integrating with an Oracle BRM system. Other projects should use external mediation to convert external CDRs into Diameter messages for MATRIXX processing.

You can easily extend MATRIXX Engine functionality to capture new subscriber-related data and then use the extended fields as a basis for pricing, rating, and policy decisions. You can also add new Diameter AVPs to capture information from the network and base rating and post-rating operations on this data.

If necessary, you can follow these instructions to uninstall the MATRIXX Engine software. This process will uninstall the following components: Proxy Server, Traffic Routing Agent, Network Enabler, My MATRIXX, and their related files. For information about uninstalling the MATRIXX Web apps, see MATRIXX Web App Administration.

Implementing MATRIXX in a Cloud provides the tasks required to install and configure MATRIXX Digital Commerce in a cloud environment. This guide augments Installation and Configuration.

The differences between implementing MATRIXX Digital Commerce on bare-metal, and on a sole-tenant Google Cloud Platform (GCP) include the use of Google load balancers, a MATRIXX TRA-PROC setting, and the use of only one MATRIXX Engine publishing server. The MATRIXX on GCP network diagram provided here will help you understand the networking components required.

MATRIXX Installation for Docker and Kubernetes describes the tasks required to install MATRIXX Digital Commerce components as containers, using Docker and Kubernetes.

The MATRIXX Digital Commerce software for Docker and Kubernetes is delivered in Docker images. The Helm chart and base configuration files are delivered in TAR archives.

A containerized MATRIXX Digital Commerce installation consists of containers running in pods in a multi-node Kubernetes cluster, requiring MATRIXX Engine Docker images, and specific minimum versions of third-party software.

Follow this procedure to modify operating system settings and install Docker on all hardware nodes.

Follow this procedure to install and enable Kubernetes binaries and enable iptables for bridged packets.

Follow this procedure to initialize Kubernetes, enable Kubernetes access for the mtx user, and set up networking on the master node.

Obtain the Docker images, utility scripts, and YAML manifest files from MATRIXX, and host the Docker images in a registry so that they can be retrieved and instantiated as containers by Kubernetes.

Helm provides a mechanism for deploying Kubernetes manifest files in a controlled manner, and facilitates application upgrade, scaling, and where necessary, rollback. Using the MATRIXX Helm chart involves installing the Helm software, creating a chart repository, and loading the MATRIXX Helm chart and sub-charts into your repository.

Once you have installed Helm and configured a private chart repository containing the MATRIXX charts, use Helm to install MATRIXX Digital Commerce in the Kubernetes cluster.

Configure MATRIXX Digital Commerce by adding values for properties from the MATRIXX Helm chart to the values.yaml file. The MATRIXX Helm chart depends on component sub-charts in a hierarchy of reusable components.

MATRIXX Digital Commerce is delivered as multiple Docker images that can be deployed in different configurations.

A MATRIXX Digital Commerce reference configuration runs in Kubernetes clusters on actual, physical Linux systems or in third-party Kubernetes environments.

The following information describes how to implement monitoring through Prometheus in a containerized environment for MATRIXX Digital Commerce. Information collected by Prometheus can be displayed with tools such as Grafana.

MATRIXX Digital Commerce installations for Docker and Kubernetes can replace or remove containers in the process of scaling or failure recovery. This presents challenges such as insuring log data persists after a container has been removed or replaced, and the need to be able to view and search logs without having to log on to many individual containers.

The MATRIXX Engine Controller and MATRIXX Engine manager Kubernetes pods create, configure, and start the MATRIXX Engine(s) in a deployment.

You can obtain version and build information for the MATRIXX Engine, while running, with Kubernetes commands.

MATRIXX Digital Commerce Upgrade describes how to upgrade the MATRIXX Digital Commerce software to version 5204. During this process, you will upgrade these important MATRIXX Digital Commerce components: MATRIXX Engines in multiple sub-domains, Traffic Routing Agent, Network Enabler, and MATRIXX Gateways and Web apps, including the REST Services (RS) Gateway and MY MATRIXX.

Several MATRIXX Digital Commerce upgrade scenarios are tested and supported for this release.

Upgrading MATRIXX Digital Commerce has several stages.

Perform the following tasks before upgrading MATRIXX Digital Commerce.

Use the following procedures to upgrade your pricing plan from an older version of My MATRIXX to the latest version.

To upgrade MATRIXX Digital Commerce you first need to upgrade and configure each of the MATRIXX Gateways and Web Apps. During the upgrade process, the upgraded services that communicate with the MATRIXX Engines are pinned to the schema version you are upgrading from. After all of the services and their sub-domains have been upgraded, you reconfigure the MATRIXX Gateways and Web Apps to use the new schema version by unpinning them from the previous version.

You can follow the procedure below to upgrade an engine chain for a single sub-domain to the latest version of MATRIXX Digital Commerce.

Follow this procedure to install the Traffic Routing Agent (TRA) software for TRA servers configured as a TRA-RT-(SI/DR) disaster-recovery and sub-domain routing agent HA Pair. If your MATRIXX implementation uses the MATRIXX Network Enabler, use the instructions in the discussion about upgrading the Network Enabler in related links instead of this upgrade task.

Before upgrading the service provider schema, you must pin the Proxy Server services. You unpin the Proxy Server services when upgrading is complete.

After upgrading all subdomain chains and TRA-RT-(SI/DR) remove the schema version pinning in all of the MATRIXX Gateways and Web apps. See the steps for unpinning at the end of the procedures in the related links.

The tasks below are not mandatory and do not apply to all MATRIXX Digital Commerce implementations.

MATRIXX Engine Administration describes how to monitor MATRIXX Engine components and to perform daily operations for maintaining a geo-graphically redundant system. This includes administration for the engine, Traffic Routing Agent, MATRIXX Gateways and Web Apps, and Notification Framework. It also provides information about recovering from a total system failure.

The topics in this section provide information about maintaining, monitoring, and resolving problems with a MATRIXX Engine installation.

The topics in this section describe how to maintain runtime operations for MATRIXX Gateways and Web Apps, such as restarting the Gateway Proxy, viewing the firewall logs, and restarting Web apps.

The topics in this section provide information on administering the components of the Notification Framework.

The topics in this section provide information on administering Traffic Routing Agent servers, including starting and stopping Traffic Routing Agent nodes and clusters. The information in this section applies to all Traffic Routing Agent functions unless otherwise noted.

The topics in this section provide information about administering the Route Cache.

This section contains information to help identify and resolve system problems.

MATRIXX Web App Administration describes installation and configuration requirements and procedures for the MATRIXX Web apps.

Prior to installation, MATRIXX recommends reviewing the operating system (OS) requirements for the servers on which My MATRIXX and MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool are installed.

Before installing the MATRIXX Web apps, note the following prerequisites.

My MATRIXX, delivered as the matrixxsw-mymatrixx RPM, can be deployed on the same server as the other Proxy Server Web apps or on a remote server that communicates with MATRIXX Engine via the Proxy Server gateways.

MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool, delivered as the matrixxsw-matrixxbct RPM, can be deployed on the Proxy Server host or a remote system that communicates through the Proxy Server to a MATRIXX Engine.

This section contains information to help identify and resolve Web app problems.

Follow the procedure below to uninstall the My MATRIXX, RS Gateway, and MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool WAR files from the /var/lib/tomcat/webapps directory.

MATRIXX Engine Integration provides information about the MATRIXX Engine notification functionality, MATRIXX Event File (MEF) publication, Subscriber database SQL mapping, and importing and exporting pricing data.

The /opt/mtx/data/mdc_config_system.xml file contains all system MDC definitions, subtypes definitions, and relationship definitions.

The MATRIXX Engine generates EDRs for all activities that can trigger rating, such as usage, catalog item purchases and cancellations, recurring cycle processing, or the first use of a balance. MATRIXX Engine also generates EDRs for non-rated events such as forfeitures. You configure event generation by using My MATRIXX, including the events to generate and whether to add a custom container with additional mapped fields.

MATRIXX Event Files (MEFs) contain a list of usage and non-usage event types generated during transaction processing. MEFs are meant to be published to, and consumed outside of, MATRIXX Digital Commerce, and can be input to third-party applications.

A General Ledger is a record of a company's financial transactions. Once configured, MATRIXX Digital Commerce generates GL information for accounts that you specify during rating. It then captures that information in MATRIXX Event Files (MEFs) and stores it in event objects in the MATRIXX Event Repository. You then use the MATRIXX GL utilities to process the GL information and generate daily GL summary records. That GL data is then available to post to a third-party General Ledger or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

This section provides an overview of subscriber data relationships.

A MATRIXX Engine can optionally load MATRIXX event details records (EDRs) into the MATRIXX Event Repository, a database separate from the MATRIXX Engine platform that serves as a long-term event storage repository. The Event Repository is an optional component separate from MATRIXX Engine that is implemented in MongoDB (you must purchase and install MongoDB separately).

This section describes how the MATRIXX Engine publishes notifications to a JMS message broker and how you can customize the information included in notifications.

The Business API Gateway is a development framework that includes the Business API SDK, Rest Services Gateway (RS Gateway), MDC Gateway Proxy, and application tier. It allows custom mobile applications, Web clients, and other custom implementations to quickly integrate with MATRIXX Digital Commerce.

The MATRIXX Network Protocol Gateway communicates with "northside" (mobile) network traffic protocols. You use Network Protocol Gateway as an entry point to communicate with network nodes, and you can rate and bill for services from those protocols. Currently, Network Protocol Gateway processes and bills for SMPP traffic by using the MATRIXX SMPP Adapter.

Call Control Framework Integration provides information about MATRIXX Call Control Framework support and configuration.

MATRIXX Digital Commerce includes an integrated GSM Service Control Function to support call control capabilities for telephony services.

Call Control Framework (CCF) can allocate incoming requests to any processing blade within a customer sub-domain.

MATRIXX Call Control Framework (CCF) provides support for message sequences using the Camel Application Part (CAP) protocol.

This chapter describes how to configure MATRIXX Network Enabler.

CAMEL Gateway is a CAMEL Application Part (CAP) server. Configure CAMEL Gateway to allow communication between MATRIXX Engine and Network Enablers through the CAP protocols.

Call Control Framework (CCF) provides support for processing roaming voice calls that use the CAP1 protocol.

Call Control Framework (CCF) provides support for processing and applying charging for voice calls that use the CS1 INAP protocol.

You can configure Call Control Framework (CCF) to send FCI operations at specific points during call handling. CCF sends FCI operations to instruct the Mobile Switching Center (MSC), or service switching point (SSF), to add charging information to the call data record (CDR) for a call.

When handling a mobile terminating (MT) call, if there is no answer, or the called number is busy, CCF can forward the call to another number.

Call Control Framework (CCF) can handover (relay) incoming TCAP messages to another platform if a subscriber can't be found in the MATRIXX database.

MATRIXX Call Control Framework (CCF) provides support for playing pre-call announcements. The following topics describe CCF pre-call announcement functionality and explain how to configure CCF to play announcements.

MATRIXX Call Control Framework (CCF) supports making Mobile Application Part (MAP) Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) call out requests to deliver USSD notifications to a subscriber. CCF also supports USSD services for queries, call back, and interactive menus using MAP-Process-UnstructuredSS-Request messages, and MAP-UnstructuredSS-Request messages.

Call Control Framework (CCF) provides support for menu driven announcements using IVRs and interactive USSD service menus that provide subscribers with options for retrieving and updating their balances and account details.

You can configure Apache FreeMarker templates for handling Call Control Framework (CCF) services such as Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) query and call back services, and menu services using announcements or interactive USSD menus.

MATRIXX Call Control Framework (CCF) provides support within the MATRIXX Charging Server for making MAP call out requests to an external platform in response to TCAP or Diameter messages that require them.

You can extend the data used in Mobile Application Part (MAP) call out requests and results to include customized private extension data in the extensionContainer parameter in MAP ATI (AnyTimeInterrogation) and MAP SRI (SendRoutingInfo) operations. This feature enables you to perform additional manipulation on the data that is sent and returned in MAP call outs, for example, to correct the digits dialed by a user when roaming.

Diameter Integration provides information about the MATRIXX Engine Diameter support and configuration.

The Diameter Gateway is a Diameter server that allows communication between the _glossary/g_glossary.html#glossentry_78A50AC9091E4807A0FFEA4784406609 and a network entity requesting service through the Diameter protocol.

The MATRIXX Diameter Dictionary is defined in the diameter_dictionary.xml file and contains definitions for the Diameter AVPs, functions, and Diameter-to-MDC mappings implemented in MATRIXX Engine.

You can configure and customize the Diameter Dictionary and the Diameter protocol.

The Diameter protocol is comprised of two basic parts: the Diameter Base Protocol (defined in RFC 6733) and Diameter applications.

The MATRIXX Engine can return Voice over Long-Term Evolution (VoLTE) Announcement-Information AVPs for Diameter LTE (Long-Term Evolution) sessions. The AVPs define the list of pre-quota announcements to play to the subscriber using VoLTE technology.

Errors with the Diameter protocol fall into two categories: protocol errors and application errors.

MATRIXX 5G Integration provides an architectural overview of the MATRIXX Digital Commerce 5G integration. This guide also provides descriptions for the Service-Based Architecture (SBA) Gateway and messaging. In addition, this document provides information about security configuration (secured and not secured).

MATRIXX 5G Integration provides information about integrating MATRIXX Digital Commerce with 5G applications using MATRIXX Service Based Architecture (SBA) Gateway and messaging services. Upgrades and version pinning are also covered.

SBA Gateway can be installed using either RPMs or Docker.

You administer the SBA Gateway by configuring its logging and monitoring features.

Common Service-Based Architecture (SBA) configuration, CHF configuration, overriding default configuration options, and mapping configuration are discussed below.

The following documentation provides information on how to create a mapping configuration. For a list of MATRIXX-supported 5G messages mappings from MDC to OpenAPI, see the discussion about MATRIXX 5G Message Mapping in MATRIXX 5G Integration.

SBA Gateway supports HTTP BASIC authentication and TLS Mutual Authentication.

The URI, mapping, and OpenAPI specification are configurable, and only the HTTP method and mapping filename are not.

SBA Gateway can be throttled to protect the platform against overload conditions.

The following sections describe the default configuration for SBA Gateway supported 5G message mapping. Topics In the sections below describe the mappings from MDC format to OpenAPI format, for each 3GPP 5G version.

MATRIXX Monitoring and Logging provides the tasks required to monitor the various MATRIXX Digital Commerce components. It identifies where information is logged and provides recommendations on what you should monitor regularly.

Use SNMP to monitor a MATRIXX Digital Commerce environment to confirm that the MATRIXX Engines are functioning properly in an active-standby HA configuration and that during an engine failover, the switch-over operation is working as designed. MATRIXX Digital Commerce also offers statistics for other components that indicate those components are running correctly, and to help you diagnose problems.

By default, the SNMP Agent running on a MATRIXX Engine monitors the status and health of all the blades and clusters it contains. It collects statistics to aid in identifying potential processing problems.

You use the Prometheus and Grafana third-party products to monitor a MATRIXX Docker-Kubernetes environment remotely, and Helm chart logging to monitor it locally.

You monitor the MATRIXX Route Cache by reading watermark log messages for each Route Cache table, and by monitoring the Route Cache SNMP statistics. The SNMP statistics are defined in the matrixx_rc_mib.txt MIB file and are returned by the print_snmp_stats.py script. They include statistics on subscriber and session data, including statistics on insert, fetch, erase, and iterator operations, general statistics on subscriber records, and garbage collection.

The MATRIXX Business API Gateway SNMP statistics are defined in the matrixx_web_mib.txt file and you display them using the snmp-net-utils snmpwalk command.

The MATRIXX SBA Gateway SNMP statistics are defined in the matrixx_web_mib.txt file and you display them using the snmp-net-utils snmpwalk command.

Traffic Routing Agent SNMP statistics are defined in the matrixx_tra_mib.txt MIB file and are returned by the print_snmp_stats.py script when run on any of the Traffic Routing Agent servers. They include categories such as TCP traffic, UDP traffic, Diameter Gateway traffic, and MDC Gateway traffic.

Event streaming errors are logged in the Event Streaming Framework mtx_event_streamer.log file. Event Streaming Framework uses log4j2 to log error, debugging, and informational messages

You use the MATRIXX Digital Commerce system logs and SNMP statistics and notifications to monitor the MATRIXX Digital Commerce web-facing applications, such as the RS Gateway, Gateway Proxy, and My MATRIXX.

You monitor the MATRIXX Gateways using JMX.

The topics in this section provide information about monitoring Call Control Framework (CCF) components, including Network Enabler and CAMEL Gateway.

The Event Repository purging utility uses log4j.

Payment service logs messages to the payment-service.log.

Pricing and Rating provides an introduction to MATRIXX pricing and rating functionality and describes how to define the catalog components necessary for rating and policy selection. It also provides an overview of the MATRIXX rating process and an introduction to My MATRIXX, a Web-based user interface application you use to create and manage product catalogs.

MATRIXX Charging Application can perform both online and offline rating in support of next-generation networks and legacy systems. It can also handle hybrid sets of convergent, prepaid, and postpaid services, enabling service providers to have a diverse subscriber base.

The MATRIXX pricing model is highly flexible and enables you to create innovative service offerings and tailor pricing to subscriber needs. It is compatible with the Telemanagement Forum Shared Information/Data (SID) model.

MATRIXX uses the Apache™ Subversion™ source control system to maintain all pricing files contained in a pricing repository. The pricing repository is comprised of one or more independent pricing domains, each of which contains the files that make up a pricing plan for that domain.

Administering a domain includes tagging a version of a domain so it can be restored, if necessary, adding domains to a pricing repository, and importing and exporting domains.

Deploying a pricing plan involves compiling the pricing plan into a configuration file and loading the configuration file into the pricing database. During compilation, the pricing schema is validated and any errors that occur are displayed.

MATRIXX Pay Now describes the tasks required to configure MATRIXX Pay Now and the MATRIXX Payment Service that enables Pay Now and provides overviews, recommendations, and conceptual discussions to help you understand these tasks.

MATRIXX Pay Now enables the Charging Server to request immediate payment for product offer and bundle purchases, postpaid balance payments, and prepaid balance recharges from a Payment Gateway Provider. Subscriptions can make quick and secure purchases using payment methods such as credit and debit cards.

System administrators must configure the Payment Service to enable communication between Apache ActiveMQ, a MATRIXX Engine, and the Payment Service. In addition, they must configure the Payment Service 3rd party Payment Gateway Provider properties file location.

This procedure describes how to run the Payment Service as a service.

Each Payment Gateway Adapter can support multiple features, operations, and payment methods.

Each client that communicates with the Payment Service will have different requirements based on the payment gateways which it supports. Client developers should contact MATRIXX support for information specific to their client implementation.

MATRIXX Policy describes the tasks that must be completed to configure MATRIXX Policy Application functionality and provides overviews, recommendations, and conceptual discussions to help you understand these tasks. In addition, it describes the supported Diameter policy AVPs and MATRIXX Policy Application SubMan APIs.

The MATRIXX Policy Application runs on top of the Application module and provides the business logic to support real-time policy decisions and rules. It allows charging and network quality of service (QoS) to be flexibly and dynamically linked to customer, service, and network parameters.

Policy configuration in My MATRIXX includes both Gx and Sy configuration.

The SubMan APIs include session query, session validation, and session delete APIs for charging and policy sessions.

The Sy policy counter APIs include MtxRequestDeviceEvaluatePolicyCounterSet and MtxRequestDeviceQuerySession.

A MATRIXX Policy failover can be due to a hard failure or can be planned.

MATRIXX Engine supports the Sy and Gx interfaces for policy control.

Event Streaming describes the tasks required to create custom event streams for events received by your MATRIXX Digital Commerce environment. An event stream is sent to the Event Streaming Framework from the Event Stream Server running on MATRIXX Engine. The Event Streaming Framework provides the APIs, libraries, and other files needed to create custom event streams. The Event Streaming Framework provides a connector for sending event stream data to Apache Kafka.

You use the MATRIXX Digital Commerce Event Streaming feature to produce custom event streams from the events that MATRIXX Digital Commerce produces. An event stream is an ordered, unbounded, and continuous flow of events. By creating event streams of specific events relevant to your networks and businesses, you can monitor or analyze event data in real time using an external event-handling solution.

Use these steps as a summary of tasks required to implement event streaming in a MATRIXX Digital Commerce environment.

An Event Streaming Framework connector is required to stream events. The default connectors are listed in this section. For information about creating a custom connector, see the discussion about creating a custom connector. For information about setting the logging level for individual connectors, see the discussion about managing Event Streaming Framework logging.

The Event Stream Server and Event Streaming Framework both require administration tasks.

Subscriber Management provides an overview of subscriber-related data, including users, groups, subscriptions, devices, balances, and notifications. You can capture any attribute of a subscription and base rating on it, enforce subscription and group spending limits across all services and networks, and notify users associated with subscriptions and groups when the subscriptions and groups are nearing spending limits.

MATRIXX Engine supports service authorization and cut-offs to ensure subscriber usage is valid and revenue loss does not occur.

You can associate a subscription with a user in a many-many relationship using the user APIs.

When a network message is received, the device information is used to guide the service usage to the subscription. As a result, a subscription can have any number of associated devices.

Managing subscriptions includes adding subscriptions to groups, removing subscriptions from groups, setting the status of subscription objects, and associating users with subscriptions. You can perform these operations by using MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool and any custom applications that call the SubMan APIs.

You can create, provision, and delete devices by calling the SubMan APIs and scheduling automated tasks.

Managing users includes creating and deleting users, associating users with subscriptions, and assigning users roles. You can perform these operations by using MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool and any custom applications that call the SubMan APIs.

Managing product offers includes purchasing and canceling product offers, and removing expired product offers. You can purchase and cancel product offers by using MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool and any custom applications that call the SubMan APIs. Expired product offers are removed from subscriber and group wallets automatically after a configured amount of time.

You can use MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool and any custom applications that call the SubMan APIs to top up balances, forfeit balances, and adjust balances. You can also set up balance notifications to trigger when balances are created, reach a credit threshold, and expire. Expired balances are removed from subscriber and group wallets automatically after a configured amount of time.

Rehoming is the process of moving a user, group, device, or subscription from one sub-domain to a different sub-domain in a multi-domain platform.

Subscriber Management (SubMan) API provides information about the MATRIXX Engine APIs, including functions, syntax, and result codes, and the MATRIXX Engine REST and Java API implementations.

The Subscriber Management (SubMan) API defines a set of programming interfaces to the MATRIXX in-memory database. In addition, the Event Repository REST APIs return events and notifications in the Event Repository and in the Activity database (in-progress aggregated events) and event database for subscriptions and groups. The SubMan API can be used to manage the various in-memory objects in a defined manner, allowing an exchange of subscriber and group data between external applications and MATRIXX Engine.

MATRIXX Engine maintains transactional subscriber data that enables you to act in real-time to subscriber needs and service usage. The MATRIXX subscriber model is flexible and supports any type of subscriber base, such as retail, wholesale, and mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).

The following sections introduce how the various in-memory objects are managed.

The Event Repository REST APIs return events and notifications in the Event Repository and in the Activity database (in-progress aggregated events) and Event database for subscribers and groups. The RS Gateway must be configured to connect to the Event Repository.

This section explains how to use the REST API bindings to interface with MATRIXX Engine.

This chapter describes the SubMan REST APIs.

This chapter describes the SubMan APIs.

This section provides an overview of how to use the Java™ API binding for the SubMan v3 API as an interface to the MATRIXX Engine.

Business API SDK provides the APIs, libraries, and other files needed to create a customized version of the RS Gateway.

The Business API SDK is a flexible framework that includes a set of tools to manage, customize and extend the RS Gateway for customer-specific business needs. Using the SDK, you can extend existing projects or create entirely new projects to add, replace or modify services that leverage existing functionality.

The Business API Gateway is a development framework that includes the Business API SDK, Rest Services Gateway (RS Gateway), MDC Gateway Proxy, and application tier. It allows custom mobile applications, Web clients, and other custom implementations to quickly integrate with MATRIXX Digital Commerce.

You create JAR file extensions using a Maven archetype and then add those extensions to the RS Gateway as JAR files.

You can create a custom filter with the Business API SDK by creating a named filter or a filter class. A named filter is useful for simple filters while a filter class should be used for complex filters (for example, when the returned results must be modified).

The Referral Rewards RS Gateway extension is a set of APIs that return a unique referral code for a subscriber.

The Product Catalog RS Gateway extension is a set of APIs that allow users to control the visibility of catalog items to the subscriber (eligibility), and to control which catalog items can be purchased together (compatibility).

When you upgrade the MATRIXX Digital Commerce software, you must upgrade the Business API SDK as it is possible that files have changed or have been deprecated. Use the manage_integration_project.py script to remove the current release from your project directory structure and upgrade to the latest release. You should do this even if your files are not checked into Subversion.

My MATRIXX Help provides information about My MATRIXX, a Web application that offers a central location for creating pricing plans and configuring MATRIXX Digital Commerce charging and rating behaviors. My MATRIXX is intended for pricing administrators who are responsible for creating and maintaining pricing plans and for IT administrators or developers who configure the rating and charging behavior of the online charging system.

My MATRIXX is a Web application you use to create pricing plans and configure features of MATRIXX Digital Commerce that drive run-time charging and policy behavior.

You use My MATRIXX to validate and compile the pricing configuration file, compile pricing, and set up and manage user roles and domains; create and manage catalog items and catalogs, manage eligibility features and rules, and manage the Normalizers interface; create and manage balances, pricing, offers and bundles, general components, and application-related components; and policies for charging and rating. Use General Configuration to create components that support pricing items and charging functionality such as announcements pricing components, attribute definitions, denial codes, products, decision tables, Final Unit Indication (FUI) profiles and generators, general ledger transaction types, notification profiles, normalizer templates, and subscriber information query actions, profiles and generators.

Use the Home menu to validate and compile the pricing configuration file, compile pricing, and set up and manage user roles and domains.

Catalog Configuration contains the Catalog Items interface that you use to create, change, or delete catalog items; the Eligibility interface to manage eligibility features and rules to determine whether a subscriber, group, or device is eligible for a catalog item; and the Normalizers interface you use to edit normalizers.

Charging Configuration contains interfaces you use to create and manage balance, pricing, offer and bundle, general, and application-related components.

Policy configuration components are used by MATRIXX Charging Application and MATRIXX Policy Application for charging and rating. Policy configuration components that you can create in the sub-interfaces of this interface include policy session mappings, Sy policy, Sy policy counters, Sy policy profiles, Sy policy templates, Gx event triggers, Gx event trigger groups, Gx policy, Gx policy profiles, Gx QoS profiles, and Gx static or dynamic PCC rules.

MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool Help describes how to use MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool to view and manage subscription and group account information, including purchased offers, services, and balance amounts. MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool users are granted privileges (including managing subscriptions and groups) based on the user role they are assigned. For information about what roles MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool supports, see MATRIXX Engine Administration.

When you log in to MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool, the Home page opens.

You can perform a general search for users, devices, groups, or subscriptions. In addition, you can search for an object by defining certain criteria. The search criteria available is dependent on the object type.

Use the User Summary page to display information for a user. Users have a many:many relationship with subscriptions and groups. If assigned the Admin user role, the user is the recipient of group notifications.

Use the Subscription Summary page to display information for a subscription.

MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool allows you to assign devices to users and search for devices by Access Number, IMSI, Object ID, or External ID. If Login devices are enabled, you can search for devices by Login ID.

A group is a collection of one or more subscriptions, users, other groups, or a combination of those. A group can belong to one other group only, but a subscription or user can belong to any number of groups. Each group can have one or more optional administrators (a subscription or user with an Admin user role). If an administrator is added, it must be an existing subscription or user but does not have to be a group member. Use the Search screen to display information for a group.

On the Home page, click View Offers to view all of the current offers in the MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool database. Or click the Offers tab in the header on any page other than the main page.