Originally Posted by
formeraa
It doesn't HAVE to be this way. However, the airline reservations systems were built decades ago before the addition of frequent flyer programs, upgrades, etc. A reservation system has to be up 24/7 to process passenger reservations -- and I must say that SABRE does an excellent job overall.
Other airline systems such as frequent flyer tracking can be done as a SABRE add-on or in another system. In either case, the data is downloaded at most once a day and, then, the frequent flyer system must have time to process it.
Your customer database has probably been designed sometime since the late-90's. You're very fortunate to have real-time customer information. Unfortunately, the airlines systems are a bit more complicated, hamstrung by decades-old technology that continues to work almost flawlessly.
That's why I was confused when Delta appeared to move
backwards by adopting NW's loyalty program system rather than the one designed as part of the real-time "Delta Nervous System," in which everything communicated with everything else in real-time.
http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Proje...as-Last-Stand/ (bottom of page)
http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...Nervous_System
http://www.tibco.com/multimedia/ss-delta_tcm8-754.pdf
http://www.cwhonors.org/search/his_4a_detail.asp?id=409
(etc.--see
http://www.google.com/search?q=delta+nervous+system)
I suppose if something isn't completely broken, it's not worth fixing, but on the other hand, Delta proved it's possible to successfully migrate to modern technology (and reap many benefits in doing so). [And even then, DNS runs on legacy hardware--DNS 2.0 is supposed to move to modern hardware.]
Yes, our database is newer and runs on modern server-farm hardware instead of mainframes.