Policy Reporting Overview

Features

The Policy Reporting interface is a feature that lets you export subscriber records from the policy engine of Cisco Policy Suite to another system to define file format for further processing.

The Cisco Policy Suite Reporting Interface can export subscriber accounting records in these ways:

  • Export to an internal data structure

  • Replicate to a MySQL database

  • Replicate to a CSV (comma separated value) file

With the Reporting interface installed and configured, you can treat account records in the following ways:

  • Define a reporting server that groups similar records for exportation in a similar manner.

  • Define a reporting record that contains 1 to n fields, each field of a basic type (String, Long, Decimal, and so on).

  • Mark a record as a statistic record. A statistic record indicates to the system that it updates a given set of key fields with statistical data.

  • Export records to a CSV file or to a MySQL database.

If preferred, you can enable Redis and disable Mongo for Policy reporting. To do this, you must configure two new parameters in the qns.conf file. See the "Enabling Redis Reporting" section in Configuration File Parameters.

Policy Reporting Interface

This section discusses and defines the features used by the Policy Reporting Interface:

  • Formats available for replication, JDBC CDR (Call Data Record) Replication, CSV Replication, and Realtime CSV Replication.

  • Reporting server indicates to Cisco Policy Suite where the records are physically stored.

For more information on replication parameters, refer to Configuration File Parameters.

JDBC CDR (Call Data Record) Replication

Database replication is enabled by adding a JDBC replication object for reporting. All attributes are standard MySQL connections with the exception of the following attributes:

  • Run on Instances - The instances where the reporting JDBC replication runs. You can select instances that need to participate in replication of reporting records.

  • Replication Period Seconds - How often the temporary JDBC records are updated with data from the work queue.

  • Camel Case to DB Name Conversion - Translate names such as "thisIsATest" to the following DB field THIS_IS_A_TEST.

CSV Replication

CSV replication is set up by adding a CSV replication child to the reporting server configuration.


Note

Only one CSV configuration should be added under a given server.

  • Run on Instances - The instances where the reporting JDBC replication runs. You can select instances that need to participate in replication of reporting records.

  • Replication Period Seconds - How often the temporary JDBC records are updated with data from the work queue.

Realtime CSV Replication

Real time CSV replication is the same as normal CSV except in these ways:

  • CSV files are written out even if they are empty.

  • The cut over to the next CSV file occurs at the defined time, even if a new file is not needed due to file size.

Reporting Server

A reporting server is a grouping of related reporting records that are exported in the same manner to the same destination. A reporting server is defined in the Reporting Server section of the Reference Data tab.

The purpose of a reporting server is to indicate to Cisco Policy Suite where the records is physically stored.