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Project Report
‘Indian Railways Reservation Case’
Corporate Information ManagementSubmitted to:
Railways Reservation Case Page 1
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Railways Reservation Case Page 2
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................42.OBJECTIVE ...........................................................................................................................53.ARCHITECTURE GRID .......................................................................................................64.STRATEGIC GRID ...............................................................................................................75.CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR & DECISION MAKING PROCESS FOR NEW PRS RESERVATION SYSTEM.......................................................................................................86.IMPORTANT BUSINESS RULES TO BUILD RESERVATION SYSTEM.....................107.ER-DIAGRAM – PRS/Railway Reservation System...........................................................12BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................................................13
Railways Reservation Case Page 3
1. INTRODUCTION
Corporate Information Management Inventory helps us in learning the fundamentals
underlying the modeling, design, development, control, evaluation, and strategic use of
computer-based information systems for corporate to run their business in this competitive
world efficiently, effectively, and profitably.
2. OBJECTIVE
The Objective of the project is to provide the following referring to the Railway reservation
case in particular, the Indian Railways in general.
Creation of Architecture grid with clear illustrations of its components.
Representation of all the applications of the case in the strategic grid (Cash,
McFarlan & McKenney)
Listing of all the critical success factors for the reservation system.
Representation of the decision making process involved in the case (whether to go
for a completely new system or not) in a hierarchical structure.
Enumeration of the important business rules used in the case to build a reservation
system and represent these rules in ER-diagram.
3. ARCHITECTURE GRID
4. STRATEGIC GRID
5. CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR & DECISION MAKING PROCESS FOR NEW PRS RESERVATION SYSTEM
The most critical success factor for the PRS system is the support, without the proper
support in place the prolonged breakdown in the application can lead to severe
disruption of all types of the rail services in the country, the PRS should be
supportable and give the better uptime.
The New PRS system should be available 24*7 across the counters for Indian railway,
currently the existing system is not available all the time rather there is 4 hours
downtime associated with the existing system.
The PRS system should be unambiguous and correct to build the credibility and
handle the large customer volume.
The PRS should be consistent across various situations.
The New system should provide the enhanced and greater maintenance flexibility.
The New system should be able to meet or beat the existing system at any point of
time in terms of load that is the most important critical factor for the proposed/ new
PRS system.
The PRS should use the component based architecture rather than using the
monolithic application architecture that will help making changes changing business
rules quickly.
The PRS should be able to handle the fast paced sustainable growth as the case
clearly indicate that the growth of the PRS centers from last couple of years has been
exponential and is going to continue in the same way in near future, keeping this
into account, the PRS system should be able to handle this growth and should be
sustainable.
The PRS should be able to meet or beat the current system performance where the
system uptime is close to 99.2% and the average transaction latency is less than 3
seconds.
The team should be able to handle the support and will be able to take care of issues
that might come in the future, the team should be provided the appropriate training
to take care of the support calls and carry out the whole support on their shoulders.
The PRS should provide the universal standard- based system unique to IR that
would enable partner organizations to access information in a controlled fashion
from the PRS and in future the same interfaces can be used to tap into the larger
travel management community to offer innovative travel packages to the
passengers.
A steady technology evolution is needed to create to the new PRS without
destabilizing the existing PRS.
The PRS system should be in such a way so that it can be extended if needed and
change the functionality without affecting the customers or system in process,
currently the existing system that is written in c and use the Transaction Processing,
monitoring and changing the software is a tedious task that needs an overhaul using
the flexible DBMS system which can change the programming logic as per ever
changing business logic.
The existing PRS system handles various parameters like various types of train,
quotas, classes, discounts/ concessions and coaches, the proposed/ new system
should be able to carry out the same variability and support the current process.
The PRS System should provide the better working environment The PRS creates an
environment to reduce the unethical practices in reserving accommodation.
The PRS should be deployed in such a way so it can reserve the seat from any station
over Indian Railway, possibly from any PRS counter.
The PRS should work in such a way so passengers need not to wait in long queue
rather the transaction should be fast enough to get completed to reduce the
customer waiting time.
6. IMPORTANT BUSINESS RULES TO BUILD RESERVATION SYSTEM
The important business rules for reservation system are is given below –
1. The booking should have prospective customer/ Passenger Name and Identification
as the attributes.
2. Seat availability needs to be up-to-date at any time to ensure that the data is fresh
and not stale, every transaction needs to be atomic however consistent to establish
the online purity to double check that not the same seat is booked against two
separate requests.
This means the transactions should follow the ACID property of database.
3. Ideally the PNR number should be the primary key to find out the details/ status of
any booking/ cancellation of the existing booking.
4. Customer/ passenger details are required to kick-off the reservation process, this
should have contain these mandatory fields
Name
Identification – preferably the passport no./ PAN no./ License no.
Gender
Age
Address – office or residential address.
Phone no. – Residential or office no.
Gender – male/ female
5. The reservation data/ status/ availability can also be provided if customer knows –
The train details – train number, train name or the route from where
(source) to where (destination) the journey needs to be completed.
6. While reserving the seats customer needs to tell the preference – A/C, first and
second class, sleepers, general etc. where the seats are required with the number of
seats that are needed, since India has quota system based on that the ticket prices
vary or waived off for some cases these quotas– senior citizens, kids, army
personnel, railway staff, need to be presented during the reservation process.
7. On completing the reservation process, passenger is required to pay the fare that
ideally needs to be told before taking the print out or hard copy of the tickets.
8. While canceling the reservation, the PNR number is required, at the same time how
many number of seats, Date and class are also the mandatory attributes that are
required to cancel the reservation.
7. ER-DIAGRAM – PRS/Railway Reservation System
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Thank You!