[asterisk-dev] CDR Problem Proposals

[John Todd]

On Nov 20, 2008, at 1:49 PM, Leif Madsen wrote:

> Steve Murphy wrote:
>> Hello--
>>
>> When I did it, catching CDR xfers, etc, in the
>> bridge routine seemed such a good idea. After all,
>> if we cut a CDR there, we were guaranteed to never
>> miss a call leg! But the further I go down that road,
>> the worse the decision appears.
>
> Perhaps building CDRs into Asterisk is the wrong approach, and maybe  
> we
> need to take the course of allowing people to build their own CDRs via
> the dialplan; and that just means providing them the tools to do it,  
> and
> some examples of the most common scenarios (this is what CEL is  
> supposed
> to be right?)
>
> It seems everyone has a different idea about what CDRs are supposed to
> be, and how they are supposed to be represented, and perhaps no route
> you take is ever going to succeed at solving the underlying issue.
>
> Just a thought, but I'd hate to see spend another round of trying,  
> just
> to realize that perhaps there is no route to success using the current
> methodology?



Well, the most obvious problem with that solution is that the Dial()  
command doesn't allow for much visibility into what's going on with  
the call.

So it may be that CEL or something like it is the answer, but call  
events probably need to be recorded in a way that is outside the  
dialplan since there are many "invisible" parts of calls that the  
dialplan is typically executed during those events.  One could argue  
that the dialplan maybe SHOULD be called during those events - but  
that's a different architectural issue.   Plus, other API-ish things  
would then have to push CDR entries of their own instead of relying on  
Asterisk to do it "without thinking."   Despite being complex today, I  
would suggest that removing CDR functionality from the core would make  
programming Asterisk _more_ difficult.  I won't argue that perhaps  
there are better ways it could be done in the "core", but I'm not well  
positioned right now to make a case one way or the other as to what is  
the best method.

JT


---
John Todd
jtodd at digium.com        +1-256-428-6083
Asterisk Open Source Community Director