[Freeswitch-users] mod_cdr revival (or new module maybe)

Thu Oct 30 12:09:30 PDT 2008

/me sends Anthony's post to the printer to be laminated and framed...
:-)

________________________________

From: freeswitch-users-bounces at lists.freeswitch.org
[mailto:freeswitch-users-bounces at lists.freeswitch.org] On Behalf Of
Anthony Minessale
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 6:10 AM
To: freeswitch-users at lists.freeswitch.org
Subject: Re: [Freeswitch-users] mod_cdr revival (or new module maybe)

Actually,

The goal is to not limit the functionality by over thinking how things
will be used but to provide building blocks to make much
more possible. Our analogy for this is that if you take the common lego
reference, If you have something cool built out of legos but they are
super glued together it limits what you *could* have done had then not
been.

The system that David described is indeed ideal.  I have mentioned it
more than once and its no coincidence that FreeSWITCH plays into that
model to a tee.  I do not mention it very often because I think
understanding that concept alone is valuable advice that I'd prefer not
to waste on deaf ears so I recommend you heed his suggestion.   

Logging direct to DB is not a sin or anything but it's just not very
reliable.  We have so many ways to process call records as it is.
you can use the cdr_csv if you want legacy support from asterisk that
you can eventually tweak with templatable output, you can even make a
template that generates the log as ready to roll sql statements you can
just cat into mysql.

We have event_socket + channel_hangup event which has all the same info
that the cdr_csv uses to generate the file.
We have the XML cdr that is a 3 dimensional view of the call with an
account of nearly everything that happend including
each application executed, branching records when the call is
transferred complete with a timestamp for each occurance.

--"However it would be great if freeswitch had the options for extra
functionality (auto log rotation, db cdrs etc)
so that it meets the peculiarities of every different project."

A single cron entry that does kill -HUP `cat freeswitch.pid` and you
have automatic rotation in unix.
In windows there are several cron equivs and instead of kill you can use
an xml-rpc script to call the FSAPI call "fsctl send_sighup"
also you can schedule it to happen automaticly with the FSAPI

sched_api @300 mygroup fsctl send_sighup

A script connected to event socket subscribed to channel_hangup can act
as your DB cdr engine and has the bonus that it could
connect to N boxes at once as well as be able to tell if the system was
in trouble by listening for system heartbeat events and or socket
disconnect.

Moral of the story, there is more already there than first appears.
I've always hated the M$ paper clip so I strive not to bring him back.
"It looks like you are trying to run a VoIP termination company! Shall I
assume how you want your call details?"

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 7:43 AM, regs at kinetix.gr <regs at kinetix.gr>
wrote:

I'll try some tests with various combinations first and then decide
what's best.

I have to say that I was astonished to find out that freeswitch had so
many event handlers from the very beginning.
However it would be great if freeswitch had the options for extra
functionality (auto log rotation, db cdrs etc)
so that it meets the peculiarities of every different project. That
would make a big difference compared to
other softswitch solutions where the lack of such features prohibits
people from using them (especially in
the carrier grade level). User feedback (and wish lists) is the key for
the success of an open source (or not) 
project...

Thank you all for your replies. You' ve been very helpful.

David Knell wrote: 

The sleep's done each time the directory's empty, not each time a file's
written.  File open and close
are trivial (it's probably still cached), and the contents are going to
have to be parsed wherever you 
process it.

We've used exactly this to process deliver CDRs on boxes handling in
excess of 500K mins/day
without issue.  And, looking at one now, the CDR processor's used about
4% of the CPU time
of FreeSWITCH, and about half that of the MySQL database which it writes
the records to, also
on the local machine, from which they're simply copied to the main CDR
processor.

It performance simply isn't worth worrying about.

--Dave

"sleep for a couple of seconds"

But then you could only insert 1800 cdrs per hour...
If I was to insert 36000 cdrs per hour this means that I have to
open
parse
close
10 files per second. Imagine the I/O penalty just for opening - closing
the file.
(the persing is the same for both situations)

David Knell wrote: 

regs at kinetix.gr wrote:

	Yes, the xml files give you tons of info... but isn't it a
little 
	insufficient - performance wise -
	to open and close so many files in such a little time. In a PBX 
	environment that wouldn't be an
	issue but if we get to the small-voip-carrier level (some
thousand cdrs 
	per hour)
	that could slow things down considerably, wouldn't it?

Not that you'd notice.  We run XML CDR to database scripting on each box

that we use
for switching, and it's a pretty trivial task compared with switching 
all that media.  Doing it
this way is:-
(a) distributed - one process per box scales nicely;
(b) robust - script down, DB down, no problem: files just queue up;
(c) simple - the script logic is trivial:
- while 1
  - for each file in the XML CDR directory
    - open it
    - parse it (XML::Simple for us)
    - insert it in to the DB
    - delete it
  - sleep for a couple of seconds
Two error cases: can't parse or can't find data which should be there: 
move the file in to
another directory to be examined by real eyes; DB insert fails: break 
out of inner loop and
it'll be retried after a short pause.

--Dave

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-- 
David Knell, Director, 3C Limited
T: 020 8114 8901  F: 020 3002 7257  M: 001 415 630 3031
http://www.3c.co.uk 

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-- 
Anthony Minessale II

FreeSWITCH http://www.freeswitch.org/
ClueCon http://www.cluecon.com/

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