[asterisk-users] CDR Design

[Atis Lezdins]

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 2:35 PM, Andrew Thomas <andy at datavox.co.uk> wrote:
> "I'd disagree. In some cases a event based system would be the best
> solution, but in systems with high call volumes, scanning through events
>
> looking for the proper billing information and parsing them would be a
> hard job compared to CDRs."
>
> That's just it - you wouldn't be 'scanning' any CDR's - you'd be given
> Events.  Your 3rd party app could then do anything it wanted to with
> them.
>
> Events are real time - not historic (like CDR's).  Events are presented
> as they happen (hold, ring, etc) - CDR's are usually presented AFTER the
> call has finished so you miss things like hold-times etc.
>
> Remember, I am not saying that everyone should stop using the CDR's if
> they feel comfortable with them - but I, for one, don't trust them for
> building a stable billing platform or a real time stats package (which
> more and more customers seem to want these days).

Pardon me,

I have created realtime stats package that's based on CDR, you see new
info immediately after call leg/event is over

http://ftp.iq-labs.net/screenshots/cdr_view.jpg

> If you start to change the CDR's to account for extra bits (using a
> unique ID) then your 'scanning' actually increases as you will need to
> tie up all the unique ID's to get one full call progress path.

This is exactly how real-time billing works. If you somebody wants it,
they put in custom ResetCDR(w) in their dialplan and have all kinds of
events logged. Having Asterisk write all the timestamps/durations into
database is just much simpler.

> Please note, I am not trying to cause flame wars here - just stating
> that I'd love an event based stream, that I can parse any way I see fit.
> I know there's the AMI - but that is a 2-way, give-you-everything
> solution.  All I want is to know when a handset and/or trunk does
> something (I don't care about SIP registrations etc).
>
> I guess we'll just have to wait and see what santa murf gives us all for
> Christmas :).
>

I really want to contribute this discussion (and RFC), i'm reading it
and i have lot of to say, but it's hard to find time for reading RFC
(i'm in middle yet). So, i hope this will go on and allow me to
respond with some objective comments.

Regards,
Atis


-- 
Atis Lezdins,
VoIP Project Manager / Developer,
IQ Labs Inc,
atis at iq-labs.net
Skype: atis.lezdins
Cell Phone: +371 28806004
Cell Phone: +1 800 7300689
Work phone: +1 800 7502835