[openss7] TCAP

["Brian F. G. Bidulock" <bidulock@openss7.org>]

Johnathan,

> Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2001 19:05:26 -0800
> From: Jonathan Nichols <jnichols@traxsis.com>
> To: openss7@openss7.org
> Subject: TCAP
> 
> Hello,
> 
>     I was wondering where TCAP was on your priority list.  

TCAP is largely complete but is not yet available for download.

> 
>     I'm in the process of looking for an open source tool that will 
> build and parse TCAP messages.  It appears that openss7 is going from 
> the bottom up rather than the top down, so it doesn't look like TCAP is 
> in the near future.  Do you know if there is a tool out there that will 
> allow me to build and parse TCAP messages of the ANSI T1.114 flavor??

I think what you are looking for is a tool to build and parse TCAP
application service elements (ASEs) for something specific like
MAP or AIN.  The upper-most module for OpenSS7 provides transaction
and component sub-layer support, but leaves the building and parsing
of components (ASEs) to user-level programs.

If you are looking for something to parse ASN.1 syntax descriptions
for Application Part ASEs and provide you with an encode/decode
engine, there are several affordable ASN.1 compilers on the market
and associated with various tools.  I have worked with Telelogic and
ASN2CXX in the past.  If you are really interested in opensource
ASN.1 compilers there is snacc (the ubc compiler) and the OSE.

For serious work, however, it is fairly straightforward (and performs
better) to hand-code the encoding and decoding of components alongside
state machines directly in C, C++, Java or whatever you like (Python,
Perl, even Tcl builds messages directly for SNMP).

Attached are two files in "C" from the OpenSS7 stack that decode
the outer trappings of a TCAP message for the TCAP layer of the
stack.  Techniques like this are easy to perform when hand-coding
and compile quite hard to acheive optimal performance.

--brian

(These files are for example only: they are abbreviated and don't
come from the working TCAP layer.)

-- 
Brian F. G. Bidulock    ¦ The reasonable man adapts himself to the ¦
bidulock@openss7.org    ¦ world; the unreasonable one persists in  ¦
http://www.openss7.org/ ¦ trying  to adapt the  world  to himself. ¦
                        ¦ Therefore  all  progress  depends on the ¦
                        ¦ unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw ¦