Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers

Re:Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers by benwilson-512 on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @05:05PM (#31427659)

In field metering situations you can have the timeline of each meter, when it records data points, and then you have the different timeline of the backend service, when it actually _receives_ data points.

Bonus points if the meters can send data out of order.

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Re:Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers by ntr-- on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @09:28PM (#31429659)

I did a tender for aggregating events and emitting notifications from a fleet of transport vehicles that reported metrics over LTE.

When connected they would emit events as they happened, but when there was poor service or disconnection they would buffer them and send them as a burst once they reconnected... in reverse order.

I forget the finer details, but the service I was writing was supposed to notify of trucks entering and leaving geofences, inactivity etc. anything you can think of where the order of events is important.

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Re:Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers by gnat on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @05:13PM (#31427756)

Ah, thanks. OMFG and I thought our billing was hard. You're in my thoughts and prayers!

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Re:Billing systems are a nightmare for engineers by girvo on Thursday May 19, 2022 @03:26AM (#31431728)

You just perfectly described what I’m currently working on. And it’s even more complex than you’ve explained (which I’m sure you’d well know haha)

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