Web Services Audit Logs

CMP Converged Monetisation Platform. The MDS Global product that supports customer care and billing for digital service providers. Web Services functionality includes an audit logs feature, which:

• Accepts all data in the SOAP header that is contained with the web service XML- or JSON-based information exchange systems that use the Internet for direct application-to-application interaction. These systems can include programs, objects, messages, or documents. request and records this data to the audit log file.
• Makes the recorded data available to those MDS clients currently using web services.

All types of information received from SOAP headers are contained within the same log file.

The SOAP headers in the web services request are written to the log without modification as key-value pairs. This assumes the use of a flat set of headers – name/value pairs, regardless of the source of the SOAP header and the volume of data provided.

The message text of the log is updated so that the data is output as key-value pairs - for example, operation=<Web Service name>, username=<user A person with the capability to log in to the CMP GUI software, such as a customer service advisor or agent. name>.

Control for this functionality is accessed via the logger.properties file, which also controls the output of a line for every request to WebServices-Usage-Tracking.log. Standard log4j setup is used to set the logging level that controls what messages are output. Changing this logging level allows the audit log functionality to be switched on or off. For this audit, INFO level log messages are used. Audit logs are created continually while this feature is switched on.

This logger.properties file can also be used to configure the maximum size of the audit log file. The audit log continues to fill up until it reaches the maximum file size, at which point it becomes a completed log. This can be accessed by the client as per standard functionality.

The configuration for log4j uses the RollingFileAppender, which allows the maximum size of the current log file and the maximum number of log files to be specified. Once that maximum number of files is reached, the earliest files are overwritten.

If files need to be held for longer periods, move any completed files to an archive location, where they can be stored more efficiently, for example in a compressed archive format.