Telecom Technical Numerical Notation Used in Cisco VOIP Call Manager

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Subject Author Date
Numerical Notation Used in Cisco VOIP Call Manager Martin McCormick 10-06-06
Posted by Martin McCormick on October 6, 2006, 10:28 am
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        I am writing a program on a UNIX system to munch the text
output of a Cisco VOIP call manager and turn those data in to
something that looks like the output of our hard-wired PBX.
Fortunately, the data we need are a subset of all the data available
so the main problem is simply that of reformatting most of the
information. There is, however, one nasty little problem I have
discovered.

        Both the UNIX and Cisco platforms handle time and date
functions using unsigned 32-bit integers. No problem there. The
times are based upon the number of seconds since the epoch of January
1, 1970 in GMT or UTC. That's great. I discovered soon, however,
that there is an extra wrinkle that really messes things up quite a
bit.

        The Cisco call manager outputs the hexadecimal form of 3
values in something that initially looks like good old hex but is good
old hex being used to convey some form of notation, probably like
scientific notation, that one must decode in order to get the actual
hex values needed to recover the data.

        All we know for sure is that this has something to do with SQL
and Microsoft. After all, everybody uses Microsoft and UNIX doesn't
even exist, right?

        Does anybody know what this notation is called? Does an
explanation of the algorithm exist in public so one can convert the
strings that are part of the call manager output in to the unsigned
ints that actually carry the right values?

        An example of the string in question looks like:

"370A65FA-6965-4E40-A0DA-EC88DE6B"

        I appreciate any constructive suggestions, anything from what
this notation is called to a description of how to process the 5
values. That would make writing C code possible to convert them in to
the actual binary string that contain the data we need.

        Many thanks.
--

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK
Information Technology Department Network Operations Group

Posted by on October 9, 2006, 8:26 am
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wrote:
> An example of the string in question looks like:
>
> "370A65FA-6965-4E40-A0DA-EC88DE6B"

It's called a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID). GUIDs are used as
unique references to various kinds of object in both Windows and Unix
based systems. They are described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guid

Mike


Posted by on October 16, 2006, 8:38 am
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Martin McCormick wrote:
> I am writing a program on a UNIX system to munch the text
> output of a Cisco VOIP call manager and turn those data in to
> something that looks like the output of our hard-wired PBX.
> Fortunately, the data we need are a subset of all the data available
> so the main problem is simply that of reformatting most of the
> information. There is, however, one nasty little problem I have
> discovered.
>
>         Both the UNIX and Cisco platforms handle time and date
> functions using unsigned 32-bit integers. No problem there. The
> times are based upon the number of seconds since the epoch of January
> 1, 1970 in GMT or UTC. That's great. I discovered soon, however,
> that there is an extra wrinkle that really messes things up quite a
> bit.
>
>         The Cisco call manager outputs the hexadecimal form of 3
> values in something that initially looks like good old hex but is good
> old hex being used to convey some form of notation, probably like
> scientific notation, that one must decode in order to get the actual
> hex values needed to recover the data.
>
>         All we know for sure is that this has something to do with SQL
> and Microsoft. After all, everybody uses Microsoft and UNIX doesn't
> even exist, right?
>
>         Does anybody know what this notation is called? Does an
> explanation of the algorithm exist in public so one can convert the
> strings that are part of the call manager output in to the unsigned
> ints that actually carry the right values?
>
>         An example of the string in question looks like:
>
> "370A65FA-6965-4E40-A0DA-EC88DE6B"
>
>         I appreciate any constructive suggestions, anything from what
> this notation is called to a description of how to process the 5
> values. That would make writing C code possible to convert them in to
> the actual binary string that contain the data we need.
>
>         Many thanks.
> --
>
> Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK
> Information Technology Department Network Operations Group

Hi Martin,
where exactly are you seeing these values?
I've been poking round inside the call Manager SQL database, and that
looks like one of the pkid fields CM uses as unique keys. The database
is 'normalised' so to get anything useful out of it you have to look at
several tables.
If you need any more info, please drop me a line.

Cheers

Julian


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