Developing mobile distributed intelligent network services using RM-ODP.

Abstract

The Intelligent Network (IN) is a conceptual model for a service development technology to create telecommunication services. In its current form, IN is limited to service creation in isolated networks and cannot support co-operative service development between two or more networks. Rapid development in networking paradigms and standards has led to an urgent need of finding solutions to the problem of interworking heterogeneous networks. Differing abstraction levels make meaningful exchange of information difficult, and IN has not been able to meet this requirement. The Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) is a distributed object based architecture which provides a high level framework for distributed systems. The emphasis is to develop a set of re-usable functional abstractions that can be recombined in various configurations to develop required applications. This work uses RM-ODP framework to supplement deficiencies evident in IN. Two specific aspects are examined and developed. The first is service portability through service profile modeling. A model for service development in a mobile environment, and related concepts of service profile modeling and transfer are developed. The second, IN domain interworking in the ODP framework. A ODP framework for the modeling of this service profile and its migration as the user moves to different domains is proposed. Our approach allows dynamically configured interworking of domains.