Pillar 4 - Entitlement Checking

Customer access to features is done by checking a feature flag at run time, providing the customer and feature identifier.

Entitlement feature flags are set based on a customer's current usage as reported by the metering system and the limits set in the model for the currently active plans in the customer schedule.

This data can be either queried at run time, when preventing overages is more important than performance, or by checking a cache which is set periodically, when preventing overage is less important than performance.

Entitlement checks in application code must reference the feature, and never reference the plan, so that plans can be adjusted or changed without requiring changes to the application code

Values Provided By This Pillar

  1. The clear separation of concerns between application code and the pricing model definition allows for changes to the pricing model over time, without changing application code.
  2. Features can easily be enabled or disabled by adding them to plans in the model and then adding a plan to a customer schedule.
  3. Reduces the likelihood that a feature is provided to a customer who should not have access to it, or denied to a customer who should have access to it, by clear unambiguous reference to the single source of PriceOps truth.

Using This Pillar in Isolation

Traditionally, feature flagging is used to schedule deployment of features, which may be made available to beta users ahead of time, so that they can be used in production prior to a public launch.

When used as a gate for paid features, this can be very powerful on its own, as it keeps application code focused on features, rather than having to be aware of the details of a pricing model.

However, if feature flags are not automatically set based on usage, then this can involve manual steps, which are prone to error.

Additionally, if feature flags are defined in an ad hoc manner, rather than being deterministically generated by the feature definitions in the model, then human error can cause problems.