PriceComponent

PriceComponents are fees included in a PricePlan, which subject to conditions Functions) may contribute to the total amount charged. Components within the same plan are summed together in order to get the total amount (price of the service). Common examples of PriceComponents that may coexist in the same PricePlan are: startup or membership charges (to access the service), periodic subscription fees (with a certain recurrence - e.g. monthly - as long as committed to by the contract), pay-per-unit charges (whose total will be proportional to the metered usage), options or feature dependent charges. The final value of the component will depend on the Variables values (determined by the evaluation of the PriceFunction) and the Price Adjustments that may apply (e.g. discounts).

There are three ways to define a Price for a PriceComponent:

• Simply by specifying the usdl-price:hasPrice property with a defined price. (Example 1)
• Using the usdl-price:hasTextFuntion to express in natural language a price function to calculate the final price. (Example 2)
• Using the Spin:Function extension to declare a price function that calculates the price based on usdl-price:PriceVariables. (Example 3)

Example 1: Simple PriceComponent

:PriceComponent_Premium_Support
      rdf:type usdl-price:PriceComponent ;
      rdfs:label "Premium Support"^^xsd:string ;
      usdl-price:hasPrice
              [ rdf:type gr:PriceSpecification ;
                gr:hasCurrency "USD" ;
                gr:hasCurrencyValue "10"^^xsd:string ;
                gr:hasUnitOfMeasurement "MON"
              ] .

In this example we have a Price Component for the Premium Support that costs exactly 10 US Dollars a month. In this case directly defining the price is sufficient. This means that this priceComponent has a static price.

Example 2: Text Function

:PriceComponent_Web_Hosting
      rdf:type usdl-price:PriceComponent ;
      rdfs:label "Usage Discount"^^xsd:string ;
      usdl-price:hasTextFuntion
              "Number of hosted web-sites * price per hosted web-site"^^xsd:string .

If we want to define a dynamic price the property usdl-price:hasPrice is not the way to do it. We need to calculate this price based on some other values. Our PriceComponent price is based on two Variables, the number of web-sites the customer wants to host and the price for each web-site hosting. With the property usdl-price:hasTextFuntionwe can define these kind of price calculations. Note that we use natural language so virtually any kind of price calculation can be used.

Example 3: Spin Function

:PriceComponent_Web_Hosting
      rdf:type usdl-price:PriceComponent ;
      rdfs:label "Usage Discount"^^xsd:string ;
      usdl-price:hasTextFuntion
              "Number of hosted websites * price per hosted web-site"^^xsd:string .
      usdl-price:hasPriceFuntion
              :Function_Web_Hosting ;

For using the Spin:Function capabilities and define PriceFunction we use the property usdl-price:hasPriceFuntion which links a Spin:Function to our PriceComponent. These Function should be the Spin implementation of out PriceFunction defined in the usdl-price:hasTextFuntion property.