Distributed System Landscape for Travel Agency and Airline (SAP Library - Flight Data Application ? Demo Example for Integration Technolog)

Distributed System Landscape for Travel Agency and Airline

Purpose

The following scenarios have a distributed system landscape where the travel agency and the airline work and manage their data in different systems.

The tasks are distributed between the travel agency and the airline as follows:

Airline:

The airline performs tasks that are connected with the administration of its flights and bookings (see point 1. Flight Information Application under Flight Data Application: Overview).

The airline is responsible for the administration of the travel agencies that sell its tickets (see point 3. Administration of Flight Business Partners under Flight Data Application: Overview).

Note: The airline can also maintain flight customers for direct sales. This is not described in this document.

Travel agency:

The travel agency manages the flight connections that it offers and the flight trips that it has sold (see point 2. Flight Sales System under Flight Data Application: Overview).

The travel agency determines existing flights but does not get the data about flight availability (see point 1. Flight Information Application under Flight Data Application: Overview).

The travel agency is responsible for the administration of its customers (see point 3. Administration of Flight Business Partners under Flight Data Application: Overview).

Note: The travel agency manages copies of the flight data for all airlines (except for time-critical and temporary data about flight availability).

Constraints

In contrast to the scenarios that are described under Web Interface for Travel Agency Customers and User Interface for Travel Agency Employees, there are the following constraints or additions:

Data about flights (flight schedules) is stored in its original version in the airline system. The airline manages this data since it offers the flights. The flight schedules have to be replicated from the airline system into the travel agency system and the systems of the other airlines. This ensures that the schedules are available for travel agency employees and Web customers for additional planning. The data about the availability of each flight is not replicated since it cannot be guaranteed that this time-critical data is up-to-date. Flight availability has to be looked up in the airline system before every booking transaction takes place.
A travel agency sells flight trips to customers. These trips can consist of more than one flight (and possibly with different airlines). When a travel agency sells a flight trip, it must make sure that a flight booking is made with the relevant airline for all the passengers and all the flights. In a distributed system landscape, these bookings have to be made in multiple systems.
If a flight trip is canceled, all the flight bookings have to be canceled individually with the relevant airlines.

Caution

In the following scenarios, only the parts of the process flow are described that refer to the communication between the travel agency system and the airline system. For simplification, the subscenarios that refer to the interaction between the user (Web customer, see Web Interface for Travel Agency Customers, travel agency employee, see User Interface for Travel Agency Employees) and the system are omitted here. These scenarios have already been described under Web Interface for Travel Agency Customers and User Interface for Travel Agency Employees. They do not contain any new aspects from a technology point of view.