Parlay

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Parlay is a programming interface for telephone networks.

Overview

The industry consortium Parlay Group was founded in 1998 with the aim of specifying programming interfaces (APIs) that standardize and simplify access to and control of telephone networks. An abstraction from the underlying hardware and network technology is sought: the control of a call in the fixed network and in a mobile network are mapped to the same parlay functions, for example.

The aim is to be able to develop IN services more easily - an IN installation should not only be able to be carried out by highly qualified telephone experts from the network operator or a hardware provider, but also by outsiders and software houses in order to create value-added services faster and more cost-effectively.

Furthermore, the telephone networks and the Internet will be better connected - the merger is intended to enrich the business with value-added services. An example of this would be Click to Dial - a service that automatically establishes a telephone connection when you click on a website. Another example would be a service that locates the lost cell phone of a user and shows the current location on a map on a website. This effect is known in specialist circles as the convergence of telephone and IP networks .

Relationship to other standards and organizations

The Parlay group works closely with ETSI and 3GPP . The Parlay specification is published by all three organizations. Within the 3GPP, the Parlay specification is part of the Open Service Access architecture and is therefore also referred to as Parlay / OSA .

Technical background

The architecture described by the Parlay / OSA specification is divided into three large groups:

  • Service Capability Features (SCF) - these are the intersections with the network functionality of the telephone network. They make it possible, for example, to initiate, control and end a call or play an announcement.
  • Framework - offers basic mechanisms such as the identification and authorization of the applications to the SCFs and enables the applications to use these SCFs. Furthermore, the framework should enable interoperability between SCFs from different providers and the applications.
  • Applications - the applications that mostly run in a special application server. They implement the logic of value-added services and use the services of the telephone network using the SCFs.

The Parlay / OSA specification describes the interfaces between these components. Tools and interfaces for the administration of the framework, the SCFs and their applications are not described in more detail in the specification, but provided as part of the overall architecture.

All service capability features and the framework of a provider are collectively referred to as a Parlay Gateway .

All Parlay / OSA interfaces are defined in the IDL for CORBA . This enables a language-independent implementation of the various parts. For example, some SCFs may have been programmed in C ++ while the applications were implemented in Java .

ParlayX

Since 2003, some interfaces have been specified in the description language for web services ( WSDL ) and referred to as ParlayX . ParlayX defines a number of functions that do not exist in the IDL-defined interfaces, such as sending an SMS . Images of the previous Parlay / OSA interfaces were also set on web services.

ParlayX is not to be regarded as the successor to the IDL version of the Parlay / OSA definition. Both branches of the Parlay Standard will be further developed. The Parlay / OSA API currently exists in version 5.0, version 6 exists as a draft. ParlayX is currently in version 2.1, the successor versions 2.2 and 3.0 are in planning.

See also

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