Introduction

Unico->CGI developed and deployed Modini to Telstra to support 3G and 4G Mobile services more than 10 years ago.

Recently Telstra deploy 4G->5G and 5G Stand Alone Mobile services and Modini is extended to support the 4G->5G and 5G Stand Alone.

The projects was planned into four releases together with fixing some critical and major defects.

Project Team

  • Duration ~6-8 months and 4 production releases
  • 1 x Project Manager
  • 1 x System Architect was responsible
    • Document the 4G->5G and 5G SA requirements and specifications
    • Provide guidance to Developers and Testers
    • Interact with Telstra Subject Mater Expert to acquire requirements and specifications and to provide technical support to Telstra
  • 1 x Senior Java Developer was responsible
    • Work with the System Architect and Testers to analyze the requirements and specifications
    • Study the current solution from the source code and technologies in the Dev, Test and Production. When the DevEnv is set up with remote debug, and yes the project is heading home with the achievement.
    • Use JIRA to plan features and defects to each sprint
    • Hourly to daily analyse each feature and defect with the tester
    • Develop the features with the unit testing
    • Develop the solution to for each defect with functional, model suport and production support testing
    • Develop and deploy the sprint releases with the integration testing
    • Use Bitbucket to build and deploy the releases to the functional tester also to work with the tester for any short cycle functional testing
    • Use Jenkins to CI/CD build formal releases to the functional and model support testers
    • Provide third level support and guidance to Model/Production Support Testers and Telstra customers via System Architect and Model/Production Support Tester
    • Interact with OCS Developers (billing and charging database and application) and Mediator Developers (sending requests and receiving responses to test mobile services) to develop the technical requirements and specifications.
  • 3 x Testers
    • 1 x Functional and Integration Tester
    • 1 x Model Support Tester
    • 1 x Production Support Tester

Technologies

The objectives were:

  • Study the legacy technologies and set up the Development Environment using Java 7, JBoss EAP 6.3, JSF 2.1, Groovy, Gradle 2
  • Study the solution from the code as there have not been documentation
  • When developing the new features we must ensure the all backward compatibilities for the 3G, 4G and some 4G->5G using Home Location paradigm and 4G->5G and 5G SA using CDB paradigm.

Front End Technologies

J2EE - Java Server Face

The User Interface is developed using HTML, Javascript, JSF and JSF Tag Libraries. DevEnv Template for JSF We use to test out some complex UI features where they were difficult to develop with many legacy concepts.

Javascript/HTML/Groovy

The User Interface is also developed to support Dynamic Business Logic using Groovy thus allowing Telstra to customise the business rules without rebuilding Modini.

Back End Technologies

J2EE - JBoss EAP running a standalone deployment and proof of concept Load Balancing deployment

Engineering the development to ensure the backward compatability to the existing legacy and forward compatability to the new way of working,

  • Remote Home Location Reference Model & Paradigm Home Location Paradigm to support 3G and 4G Mobile services Support/Maintain backward compatability
  • CDB Reference Model & ParadigmCDB to support 4G->5G and 5G SA: Support/Maintain forward compatability - enhancement is carefully considered to ensure the backward legacy and forward compatability.

Other interfaces to be considered during the development

  • SOAP/WSDL Interfaces to Mediator resulting in three or four complex schema changes and code generation developed to the modini
  • JMS Interface to Mediator
  • Command Line Interface to Mediator

Looking back: We wonder about the achievement: “To engineer, develop and deploy four releases to Telstra without any patch i.e. without any defects / To engineer, develop and deploy the solution to support backward and forward compatability / To engineer, develop and deploy the solution to support two reference models and paradigms to a legacy solution just from reading more 10 years old code and technologies - What a Miracle and What a Team!”