FYI-- I've been collecting all the CDR related bugs. I have a branch, team/murf/bug8221-1.4, where I've been testing out fixes to problems reported. I'm about to clean it up and commit it to 1.4 and trunk.
If there's one thing I've concluded, it's that there are some problems with the CDR system, and something different is in order. And, after yesterdays "Oldest 15" phone conference, with the CDR discussion afterwards, just what exactly the "new CDR" system should be, is beginning to gel. First of all, why a **new** CDR system? Well, to put it plainly, the old days of "one call", and it's corresponding "one CDR", are over. It might have been fine for Ma Bell to bill from when all that happened was, you dial a number, and two people talk, then you both hang up. But things aren't that simple any more! There's parking lots, 3 way conferences, conference rooms, transfers, blind and attended, call forwarding, findmefollowme, masquerading, queues, etc. etc., and the billing requirements can get quite tricky! 1. There will be a configuration file choice, as whether to use the "OLD" CDR system (the current one we all know and love), and the "NEW" config system, the one I'm about to describe. By default, in trunk, it will be "OLD". Maybe in 1.8, it will default to "NEW", and in 1.10, OLD will disappear, maybe. Maybe not. 2. The record format will change. Currently, each CDR has room for 3 events: start (usually channel creation), answer (from a dial operation), and end (usually when the CDR is to be closed and posted, usually a hangup, or transfer, etc.). The new CDR record will record only 1 event, and be immediately posted. For the sake of the database backends, these fields are currently output: calldate (date/time) (odbc, pgsql, mysql) start (date/time) (tds, radius, sqlite answer (date/time) (tds, radius, sqlite end (date/time) (tds, radius, clid (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) src (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) dst (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) dcontext (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) channel (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) dstchannel (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) lastapp (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) lastdata (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) duration (int) (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) billsec (int) (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) disposition (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) amaflags (int) (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) accountcode (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql) uniqueid (odbc, tds, pgsql, mysql, sqlite(option), ) userfield (odbc, pgsql, mysql, sqlite(option), ) The calldate timestamp vs. start, answer, end timestamps was a bit of mystery to me, so I checked it out... in mysql,pgsql,odbc, it's the start time; my guess is that billsec/duration fields are the important ones, and the calldate maybe just serves to help sort the records. The new CDR output format will drop the start/answer/end/calldate fields, and instead have a single "eventdate" field instead. It will add an "eventtype" field that contains a standardized event name, "START", "HANGUP", "ANSWER", "APP", "BRIDGE", for now, with possibilities like "PARK", "TRANSFER", "CONF_START", "CONF_END", and others, that we should nail down completely before beginning. Some of the other fields don't make sense any more in this sytem. "dst" might not be known until after a dial, say. "lastapp" and "lastdata" would most likely turn into just "App" and "AppData", and only be meaningful if the event type is "APP"; "duration" and "billsec" would disappear, as the users would have to the calc themselves, based on their own criteria; disposition would probably only be meaningful with certain eventtypes; amaflags, accountcode, userfield would probably be output with every event-type. The software to generate billing data would probably get a little more complex, but should be able to generate the proper numbers from much more accurate and clear data. 3. CDR's would follow the life and activity of a channel in Asterisk. Each channel is assigned its uniqueid, and BRIDGE and CONF_START events, and similar, will record both channels so channel activity can be linked. The uniqueid field in the cdr records can be used to link all the events that happened on a channel for a particular call. When two channels are linked, the necessary uniqueid's will be available to link things up. A confID might be necessary to tie calls into conference rooms together. 4. Either we can assign events a level number, and allow the user to specify via the config file, at what level they wish to log, or we can allow the user to specify in the config file exactly what events they wish to track, and even restrict which apps they wish to track as well, if not all of them. Only those events specified in the config file would be logged, hopefully reducing storage requirements and clutter. For those interested in Deep Dialplan Debugging, requesting info on ALL apps, would provide a complete record of all dialplan functions executed on a channel-- right down to NoOps and Goto's, if such are desired... 5. Some (but not all) apps currently provided by asterisk for CDR manipulation, like ForkCDR, for instance, should be unnecessary, and would not apply to the "new" system any more. Hate it? Love it? Have suggestions? murf -- Steve Murphy Software Developer Digium _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com -- asterisk-dev mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-dev
