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In addition to inventory and topology management, AAI provides the ability to do inventory administration, reporting and notification. Data in AAI is continually updated in real-time as changes are made within the cloud. Because AAI is metadata-driven, new inventory item types can be added dynamically and quickly with Service Design and Creation (SDC) catalog definitions, using the AAI model loader, thus eliminating the need for lengthy development cycles.
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AAI data views can be used by homing logic during real-time service delivery, root cause analysis of problems, impact analysis, capacity management, software license management and many other functions.
An API enables queries to AAI from clients, and two user interfaces provide visual access to inventory details and data integrity statistics.
Figure 1 provides a functional view of AAI.
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AAI also performs a number of administrative functions. Metadata models for the various assets are stored, updated, applied and versioned dynamically as needed without requiring a system shutdown for maintenance. Given the distributed nature of AAI as well as the relationships with other OpenECOMP components, audits are periodically run to assure that AAI is in sync with the inventory masters such as controllers and MSO. Adapters allow AAI to interoperate with other systems as well as 3rd party cloud providers via evolving cloud standards.
Reporting and notification
Consistent with other OpenECOMP applications, AAI produces canned and ad-hoc reports, integrates with the OpenECOMP dashboards, publishes notifications that other OpenECOMP components can subscribe to, and performs logging that is consistent with configurable framework constraints.
Accessing AAI data
Two separate user interfaces, accessed from the OpenECOMP Portal, provide inventory information:
- AAI UI: Provides details about specific service instances. Users can search by attribute name or ID, view a visual representation of the service hierarchy and related nodes, and view specific details of a node.
- Data Integrity UI: Provides information about the quality and validity inventory data. This information can be provided for a specific time period, or for specific object types or dates.
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