Originally Posted by
jackal
I'd be shocked if that were the case; it would require a MUCH more extensive overhaul of ARROW than I think would have been possible.
I tend to agree; having been on the airline side of the coin I can't imagine doing this without a complete cutover to a new CRS. But stranger things have happened.
Originally Posted by
jackal
Booked on 11/9 for travel 11/19.
I don't think the conductors' phones maintain any sort of offline database. I've had them try to look things up in dead zones and they usually just give up or say they'll come back later. If they did have an offline copy of all outstanding reservations, the database would be HUGE.
Based on your experience, it looks like there is no caching at all, but it would be entirely feasible to maintain a "manifest" subset of the database on the handheld device, at least for all-reserved trains. It would have been relatively straightforward to set up a scheme where the reservations info of everyone expected on the train is stored locally on the device and is synced anytime it is within wireless coverage. Yes, it would still be possible for the device to not have the most up-to-date information, but if the bulk of the manifest data was loaded before departure, adding new passengers and removing cancelled passengers to the device's cached database wouldn't take up too much bandwidth and would keep it current in all but the largest dead zones.
But of course, this wouldn't be feasible for unreserved trains; as you state, the size of the database of all outstanding tickets, even just for non-reserved trains, would indeed be huge.