NTG
Clarity
set
up
standards
required
by
the
major
Telecom
customer
for
equipment
(NE’s),
sites,
facilities
and
circuits
to
conform
to
Bellcore
standard
nomenclature.
Customer
information
was
amalgamated
and
resolved
among
the
three
companies
for
the
proper
identification
of
circuits.
As
in
many
telecommunications
companies
at
that
time,
many
circuits
and
facilities
represented
on
the
database
were
not
in
sync
with
the
As
Built
configuration
in
the
field.
NTG
Clarity
performed
physical
or
logical
audits
when
needed
to
resolve
facilities
and
circuits
to
ensure
that
the
equipment
and
connection
paths
were
correct
and
represented
properly
on
the
database.
A
particular
challenge
was
to
create
a
set
of
conversion
tools
that
would
facilitate
the
conversion
process
to
the
target
company
database.
This
complex
task
required
the
development
of
numerous
database
conversion
programs
and
created
a
number
of
necessary
partly
automated
data
cleanup
and
verification
activities
to
successfully
complete
the
entire
conversion
effort.
Research
showed
that
previous
attempts
to
do
this
work
by
competitive
vendors
consisted
primarily
of
database
mapping
of
tables
and
fields
from
the
source
to
target
database.
This
resulted
in
a
very
poor
conversion
statistics
of
about
20%
of
the
records
of
a
large
database.
This
left
clients
with
very
serious
manual
data
cleanup
and
verification
problems.
The
NTG
approach
was
to
develop
advanced
software
to
extract
network
and
circuit
data
form
the
source
database
to
an
intermediate
database
for
modeling
and
manipulation.
The
next
activity
was
to
simulate
all
required
circuit
types
to
an
intermediate
form
using
specially
developed
smart
algorithms
to
automate
the
process
of
changing
them
to
the
required
target
form
to
minimize
future
data
cleanup
and
verification.
Then
perform
the
mapping
from
the
intermediate
model
database
to
the
import
the
results
to
the
target
database.
The
approach
was
a
new
and
innovative
methodology
at
that
time.
This
was
an
onerous
task.
The
amount
of
data
was
typically
large,
on
the
order
of
a
several
million
records.
A
very
high
accuracy
was
required
to
minimize
manual
data
cleanup
and
verification.
Processing
efficiency
was
also
critical
because
limited
time
was
allowed
for
conversion,
typically
a
weekend.
The
source
and
target
systems
were
real
time
production
systems. |
