Stored Program Controlled Network: Data Base Administration System - OverallDescription and Operational Characteristics

As discussed in companion articles of this issue of The Bell System Technical Journal, large amounts of data on every customer billing 1759 number (a line number or special billing number) in the country must be available to various nodes in the SPC network for the network features to function properly. (See Ref. 1 for a discussion of the on-line data bases.) A method of obtaining, organizing, and cleansing the data, that is, administering the network data bases or Billing Validation Applications (BVAS), is needed. While the data can be obtained through each telephone company's (Bell or independent operating company) Service Order System (sos), these systems vary significantly in capabilities and design from one telephone company to another and even from one region to another of the same company. Further, no existing telephone company administration system had all of the sos data currently used or envisioned for SPC network features. To obtain the data and provide the administrative functions, a new support system called the No. 2 Data Base Administration System (DBAS) was designed. [The No. 1 DBAS administered data bases in Automatic Intercept System (AIS) switching machines.] The operations of the Data Base Administration Center (DBAC), the telephone company center which operates the DBAS, were revised to reflect its new capabilities. By defining a specific interface, DBAS interacts with all types of soss to obtain the necessary data. The DBAS will accept data link, magnetic tape, and manual clerk input, thus functioning in all of the modes of telephone company data entry for sos information.