GB980 Guidebook Integration Framework Concepts And Principles v1-0-2

This Concepts and Principles addendum is part of a set of documents that together comprise the Integration Framework. The document strives to make the underlining concepts of the Integration Framework familiar and to explain how those are related to other TM Forum Frameworks and to other standard organization bodies’ relevant work.

At its core, the Integration Framework serves as the technology stratum in a typical enterprise architecture within the digital value chain of a communication service provider.

It is based on two key concepts: Interface and Business Service Description.

Interface describes the expected interactions as a protocol, by specifying a set of communication messages exchanged between interacting parties.

Interfaces are transport technology agnostic and independent of the participants engaged in the interaction.

The Interface concept is further materialized as part of the TM Forum Interface Program (TIP) where interfaces are being developed.
Business Service Description — specifies how participating Applications interact across Interface(s) while specifying the data exchanges based on identified Business Entities in support of Business Process(es) thus enacting a Business Service.

The Integration Framework is reducing the development time and lifecycle costs by creating a common shared integration environment, defining standardized templates for the development of new interfaces and providing the Integration Framework tooling for implementing the interfaces.

Business Service Description enriches the semantic of the integration by providing the specialized information entities to be used across the interfaces, the constraints that applies to the specific scenario and the expected behavior.

This enhances the integration quality and interoperability to another degree.

This work harmonizes, elaborates and supersedes aspects of previous work done in regards to the concept business services in former TM Forum work including: NGOSS Contracts [TMF051], Business Services (Contract) Concepts and Principles [GB942CP], TM Forum Frameworx Implementation Methodology [GB945M], Business Services Technical Report [TR176], Frameworx Metamodels – Concepts and Principles [TR177].