, which can easily be extended for domain- and vendor-specific solutions. CORBA, RMI or Inventory API Provisioning Provisioning APIs Templates Layout Provisioning Framework Support Business Trigger / Rules Periodic Application Extensions Scheduling Audit Control Multi-protocol Network Workflow in Scripting Inventory Configuration Server Templates Tasks Framework Services Protocol Svcs Topology DB Active Discovery Security Figure 6.5 Provisioning framework. 6 Service Provisioning and Activation A major goal of the provisioning framework is to allow network equipment vendors to build provisioning extensions for specific devices and applications. They can build provisioning module extensions and expose that functionality via provisioning APIs. The module provides a common provisioning API, but applica- tions can supplement these APIs using one or more domain and vendor-specific provisioning APIs. The provisioning templates are XML documents that have parameterised provi- sioning profiles for configuring multiple devices in the network. The operator pro- vides the parameters while carrying out a provisioning operation. Provisioning templates also contain information for automatically rendering the forms that request these parameters from the operator. The business rules are Java filters that operate on the templates before they are presented to the user or applied to the network. Rules can also be applied after com- pleting a provisioning operation. Some configurable filters that are driven by XML rule files need to be provided to minimise the coding to achieve simple tasks. Examples of such simple tasks are allowing particular provisioning templates only at off-peak times. Periodic and trig- ger-based scheduling helps in scheduling provisioning activities. The OSS interfaces to the provisioning module are extensible and have a similar design to the provisioning APIs. The design supports the addition of CORBA and XML interfaces for specific interface description languages (IDLs) and document type definitions (DTDs). 