Confusion in Pay for Iternary - alternate flow - Award travel

[suekar meredilko]

Upon reading Award travel, it looks like when paying, the customer will solely use Award Travel, which means that he/she will not pay by credit card using the Transmaster system but use ONLY their mileage account.

But in reality this is not the case. i.e. if I have 500 miles of mileage travel for free and I am travelling from San Jose to Seatle say 1000 miles, I can use 500 miles and the rest the customer will pay using credit card.

any thoughts on this.

[veena madhukar]

You are right.

I don't know if you have any thoughts on ....

We need to redeem the mileage points upon the confirmation from the user before the e-mail is sent out on successful award travel. any thoughts on this???

Do you think we can interact with the Mileage Account database directly or do we need to get that information also through their frequent flyer mileage system??? any thoughts???

[Bobby Sh]

Hi,

I have one of my assumption saying : "An Itinerary can be purchased by either by Credit card or by �Award Travel�. It can not be the combination of them."


Regarding Veena's question about accessing Mileage A/c: I am thinking to have a interface for Frequent Flyer system which will be implemented by a 'HTML Parcer' class. This class will read the information being displayed by frequent flyer mileage system. [ Earlier I though of having a DAO for Frequent Flyer database, but i feel that there meight be some logic in Perl and CGI and we can't ignore them].

But I would appreciate if others can comment on this.

Bobby

[veena madhukar]

We need to redeem the mileage points upon the confirmation from the user before the e-mail is sent out on successful award travel. any thoughts on this???

Any thoughts?

[veena madhukar]

The class "Mileage Account" -- The new system appears not to have anything to do with this class; I am thinking that this is being used by FFMS for now and not directly by the proposed new system currently (will be used only when FFMS will also be rewritten). Any thoughts???

[Bobby Sh]

IMO:
After going through the requirement background, it appears that the existing FFMS system is not updated directly, when the customer books the travel.

I have kept another assumption saying: that FFMS system is updated on a nightly basis as a batch job. (Also this is out of scope) By saying that FFMS system will not have current information.

[suekar meredilko]

Originally posted by veena madhukar:
You are right.

I don't know if you have any thoughts on ....

We need to redeem the mileage points upon the confirmation from the user before the e-mail is sent out on successful award travel. any thoughts on this???

Do you think we can interact with the Mileage Account database directly or do we need to get that information also through their frequent flyer mileage system??? any thoughts???

We should update the Mileage system once the travel points are redeemed. Otherwise its a requirement half met. If system only shows mileage information, then how can you redeem it without updating it.

We can do either data level integration i.e. access Oracle directly or via Functional integration i.e. using an adapter behind an interface to the FF system

If you intend to do batch daily, then in a day a customer can redeem only once...that is a bit odd.

[veena madhukar]

how about assuming that FFMS itself has a way of redeeming the points. If you read the Background ...it describes FFMS as the system that tracks miles used and earned? Any thoughts???

[suekar meredilko]

Originally posted by veena madhukar:
how about assuming that FFMS itself has a way of redeeming the points. If you read the Background ...it describes FFMS as the system that tracks miles used and earned? Any thoughts???

Yes, but for tracking it needs to know the mileage used. I think its same to assume that you will do it using the adapter. i.e. adapter provides you access to viewMiles(), updateMiles().

FFMS is a different system. The adapter will talk to this system directly.

I am going ahead with this approach.

However what about my original query: Are you also using Mileage=CreditCard approach OR Mileage + Credit Card approach. I am inclined to use Mileage+Credit card approach...seems logical to me.

[suekar meredilko]

Turns out that Mileage + Credit card approach will be change in requirement...

I will stick to Mileage=Credit Card approach. No reason to take the risk !

[veena madhukar]

I would prefer to go ahead with pay either only using credit card or using using only award mile. Though in reality it could be a combination, am not considering for the assignment as it is not in the scope.

Coming to FFMS: there are two instances where in we will need to get data from this system. One is in developing the application client for "view frequent flyer miles". For this an Adapter approach is assured -- as an view frequent flyer miles equivalent web application is available. hence you are likely to easily implement that adapter class.

Another instance is while doing the pay itinerary by award travel. For this we will have to assume that (based on what is said in the background -- "tracks mileage earned and used") that it is possible to redeem miles.

I would appreciate any thoughts on the above.

Also...am not able to see any use of mileage account which is there in BDM. any comments on this? am i missing something?

[Cleuton Sampaio]

Hi again,

Please note that I do not know whether I have passed in the exam.

IMO this requirement is not tightly related to the real process. I have assumed that the Customer pays the entire itinerary with CC or FFM, not both. So did some friends of mine that have passed the exam.

About mileage accrue and redemption, I have assumed that a 500.000 dolars application would integrate with some other system to get the updates. The business rules governing the mileage accrual and redemption are not simple, so I assumed that the actual mileage balance should be updated upon further processing (after boarding, for example). I have stated that assumption in my assignment.

[Bobby Sh]

Hi Guys,

Was away from intenet access for last two day....

FFS(Frequent Flyer system) was developed using Perl, HTML, CGI and an Oracle database.

- I could have directly access the oracle DB(with the proper permission from network group of FBN Inc.) But i suppose the information is not that easy and there are some business rules implemented in perl and CGI (prob. that is the reason FFS is half million dollars application )

- Now the other option is to use the adaper class to access the Business component of FFS. Which I am not sure how the CGI component will expose their method like viewMiles(), updateMiles() to new system without changing the FFS syetm.

- Third option was to read the HTML. which is the only option that I can think of.

I am planning to have a interface which would be implemented my a HTML parser, 'cause going forward if FBN INc decides to rewrite FFS, I only need to change the implementation keeping the
rest of application as it is.

There is no clue how the existing system updates FFS. SUN has not given much detail on this application that is why I am planning to keep some assumption (like nightly batch job) to make design simple....


Feel free to comment I may have missed/ignored some req.
:roll:

[Andy Malakov]

Originally posted by Bobby Sh:
There is no clue how the existing system updates FFS. SUN has not given much detail on this application that is why I am planning to keep some assumption (like nightly batch job) to make design simple....

It seems that mileage redemption in FFMS database should be part of Pay by Award Points transaction. Similarly, credit card payment should increment amount of miles traveled in FFMS.

IMO in given [unreal] circumstances, the easiest way is to simulate HTTP client for CGI. Or add assumption, FFMS has alternative XML API :-)