Subject: [Dime] DCCA: RATING_FAILED without Failed-AVP

From: "Schendel, Jens" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2006 17:02:50 +0100

Hi all,

RFC 4006 says in section 4.1.3.  Handling of Unsupported/Incorrect
Rating Input and 
in 9.2.  Permanent Failures 4.1.3 that Failed-AVP MUST be populated if
RATING_FAILED Result-Code is used, e.g.

      DIAMETER_RATING_FAILED                     5031
      This error code is used to inform the credit-control client that
      the credit-control server cannot rate the service request due to
      insufficient rating input, an incorrect AVP combination, or an AVP
      or an AVP value that is not recognized or supported in the rating.
      The Failed-AVP AVP MUST be included and contain a copy of the
      entire AVP(s) that could not be processed successfully or an
      example of the missing AVP complete with the Vendor-Id if
      applicable.  The value field of the missing AVP should be of
      correct minimum length and contain zeros.

I wonder if this value DIAMETER_RATING_FAILED should also be applied
when some server internal (rating engine) error occurred (e.g. improper
administration). Then, however, actually no rating relevant AVP was at
fault which could be reported.
It seems that the mentioned error situation cannot be indicated
appropriately without violating the RFC4006.
Though, I believe that there should be no crucial client processing
associated with the occurrence or value of the Failed-AVP. There is of
course the - not very satisfying - workaround to send some generic value
such as DIAMETER_UNABLE_TO_COMPLY 5012. 

Any views?

Jens

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---

From: "Tolga Asveren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2006 12:30:05 -0500

Hi Jens,

IMHO, even if there is some misconfiguration on rating engine, it still is
running some type of algorithm to rate. It could be that it is looking for
an AVP which it shouldn't, but in any case I would expect that logic to be
able to tell what is wrong from its point of view, e.g. missing AVP,
incorrect AVP combination. It could be that the problem is with rating
engine rather than with the message but still it is usefull information in
terms of troubleshooting to include in error answer what the engine believes
is wrong. If the failure can't be correlated with the content of the
received message, IMO UNABLE_TO_COMPLY is a better alternative.

   Thanks,
   Tolga

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Schendel, Jens [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 11:03 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: [Dime] DCCA: RATING_FAILED without Failed-AVP
>
>
> Hi all,
>