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Booking Systems

It is now possible to make bookings on-line for holidays, trains, planes, hotel rooms, theatre performances...and many others.

A travel agent for example, may have computers in all its branches directly connected to a central computer where a database of all bookings is stored. This is an example of a multi-access system.

 
When a booking is made, the customer will need to provide input details  (name, date, place, number of people etc). 

These details may be entered ...

  • at a computer terminal in a multi-access system.
  • on a form on an Internet web page.
  • by transcribing them from a paper booking form.
  • by typing them in when in telephone communication with the customer.

 

This form (on an Internet web page) is used for collecting details of a passenger's booking on the Eurotunnel. These details are then used as input data when the booking is made.
This data is validated to check if the details are sensible. The computer will check to see if the booking is available, and, if it is, the booking is made and it will then store the booking details in the database.

Documents will need to be output to give to the customer, confirming the booking and giving details about it.

 
As soon as a customer makes a booking it has to be processed immediately, so that no other customer can make the same booking. This means it is a real-time (transaction processing) system.

It is essential that no data is lost, so the database will have to be regularly backed up - possibly using a tape streamer.

If payments for the booking are required, then these can generally be done on-line using a Credit card or a Debit card. If details of these are transmitted over the Internet, the website must be secure so that this information cannot be stolen.