Thread: Flight numbers data
Hi, i am in the process of writing an application about tickets, flights, etc, and i am thinking of getting the primitive data ready at the begining and doing it the right way, (e.g. the user will just select a flight number and doesnt have to enter the airports, airport coordinates, countries, airline name, airline code, departure/arrival times, etc...) I found some sources on the web about airlines (codes, names, countries, etc...), also i found about airports, but nothing about flight numbers! This application will be for enterprise (internal) company use, covering the flights of emploees around the world. I was just wondering how internet ticket agents manage to do it. Has anyone from the postgresql camp ever solved such a problem? One point for me, is that my company is doing shipping, and we are not in the travel agents business (IATA, standards etc..) at all, so its hard for me to find the path to follow, and in addition, going the full Travel Agent path would be an overkill, since what we need is just an application for the tickets. It is just that i wanna do it right, maybe play a little bit with AJAX also who knows :) Thanx for any hints. -- -Achilleus
On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 02:17, Achilleus Mantzios wrote: > Hi, i am in the process of writing an application about > tickets, flights, etc, and i am thinking of getting the primitive > data ready at the begining and doing it the right way, > (e.g. the user will just select a flight number and doesnt > have to enter the airports, airport coordinates, countries, > airline name, airline code, departure/arrival times, etc...) > > I found some sources on the web about airlines (codes, names, countries, > etc...), also i found about airports, but nothing about flight numbers! That's cause companies that keep track of those things charge a LOT of money for their datasets. > This application will be for enterprise (internal) company use, > covering the flights of emploees around the world. > > I was just wondering how internet ticket agents manage to do it. They subscribe to some service that has this information in the back end. The data in that back end comes from the one or two sources of that data who charge yearly subscriptions in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. > Has anyone from the postgresql camp ever solved such a problem? Where I work, we're building a middle level system (look up the website that goes with my domain). And if we weren't in the airline reservation industry, we couldn't afford the data sets. > It is just that i wanna do it right, maybe play a little bit with AJAX > also who knows :) But "doing it right" goes against almost every tenet of the airline reservation industry :) haha. only serious. Seriously though, you might be able to get your travel agent or whoever you do reservations through to provide you with this information in some kind of reliable format for the tickets you've bought. If you can get some kind of automated feed from them, that would be the best way, if not, maybe they can email you the info each time, and you can cut and paste it in. There's much in the reservation industry that is basically a computer implementation of a 3x5 note card system. And none of those systems were originally built to talk to each other, so it's often impossible for a single user to get any kind of automatically created data from such an industry.
On Mar 29, 2006, at 11:50 AM, Scott Marlowe wrote: > There's much in the reservation industry that is basically a computer > implementation of a 3x5 note card system. And none of those systems > were originally built to talk to each other, so it's often impossible We at one time built a nice pre-dot-com-bubble-pop fortune on taking the logical equivalent of 3x5 card info from the US government and making it web searchable. Sometimes we had to pay lots of $$$ to buy the data from various contractors, but there was no copyright on it so we could resell and/or give it away. It was a brilliant business model for its day. Now most of the data is online by the gov't itself.... It just takes some push by some enterprising individuals to move the world into better data access.
On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 10:50 -0600, Scott Marlowe wrote: > > Has anyone from the postgresql camp ever solved such a problem? > > Where I work, we're building a middle level system (look up the website > that goes with my domain). And if we weren't in the airline reservation > industry, we couldn't afford the data sets. > > > It is just that i wanna do it right, maybe play a little bit with AJAX > > also who knows :) > > But "doing it right" goes against almost every tenet of the airline > reservation industry :) haha. only serious. Yeh, IATA don't have a normalised data model, so you're badly out of luck there. There are some reasonable books on Data Modelling from Wiley you can get with fair models in, plus Kimball has a simplified data model in his Toolkit book. I'd make sure you get your requirements straight, otherwise the data model will grow and grow as each new strange-but-true wierdness emerges. Best Regards, Simon Riggs
We built an operational flight tracking and weather system that uses Postgresql, http://www.sonalysts.com/wXstation One data feed (FAA ASDI) uses both aircraft registration numbers (tail numbers) and airline-assigned flight numbers. Typically if you have the latter, you won't get the former. This feed only has information for flights in the U.S. or to/from the U.S. The data feed also includes flight plans, so it wouldn't be too hard to build up a flight number schedule over a short period of time. Outside the U.S. the problem is more difficult. > Has anyone from the postgresql camp ever solved such a problem? >
O Scott Marlowe έγραψε στις Mar 29, 2006 : > On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 02:17, Achilleus Mantzios wrote: > > Hi, i am in the process of writing an application about > > tickets, flights, etc, and i am thinking of getting the primitive > > data ready at the begining and doing it the right way, > > (e.g. the user will just select a flight number and doesnt > > have to enter the airports, airport coordinates, countries, > > airline name, airline code, departure/arrival times, etc...) > > > > I found some sources on the web about airlines (codes, names, countries, > > etc...), also i found about airports, but nothing about flight numbers! > > That's cause companies that keep track of those things charge a LOT of > money for their datasets. > > > This application will be for enterprise (internal) company use, > > covering the flights of emploees around the world. > > > > I was just wondering how internet ticket agents manage to do it. > > They subscribe to some service that has this information in the back > end. The data in that back end comes from the one or two sources of > that data who charge yearly subscriptions in the hundreds of thousands > of dollars. Just to examine a little closer (bassically show my boss this!), can you give me some pointers of some kind of web services providers (in the broad sense) that sell such yearly subscriptions, for internet travel agents? > > > Has anyone from the postgresql camp ever solved such a problem? > > Where I work, we're building a middle level system (look up the website > that goes with my domain). And if we weren't in the airline reservation > industry, we couldn't afford the data sets. > > > It is just that i wanna do it right, maybe play a little bit with AJAX > > also who knows :) > > But "doing it right" goes against almost every tenet of the airline > reservation industry :) haha. only serious. > > Seriously though, you might be able to get your travel agent or whoever > you do reservations through to provide you with this information in some > kind of reliable format for the tickets you've bought. If you can get > some kind of automated feed from them, that would be the best way, if > not, maybe they can email you the info each time, and you can cut and > paste it in. > > There's much in the reservation industry that is basically a computer > implementation of a 3x5 note card system. And none of those systems > were originally built to talk to each other, so it's often impossible > for a single user to get any kind of automatically created data from > such an industry. That was pretty much what i suspected, i have seen some 3270 type terminal emulators in some travel agents that reminded me VSE/MVS/AS400/CICS and other beauties like that!! Well, Scott your response was really helpful. What i will do is just build the tables with airlines info, airports info (IATA codes,etc..) with sources for the web. Really are there any good sources out there for such info? For airports i came across http://www.partow.net/miscellaneous/airportdatabase/ it seems very complete but it misses new airports (it doesnt have the new Greek one (IATA code ATH)which is some 5 years old). Other sources i found is just HTML pages which is not so handy. Then i would let the in-company tickets person build the flight numbers table incrementally as she works. What do you think? > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? > > http://archives.postgresql.org > -- -Achilleus
O Josh Rovero έγραψε στις Mar 29, 2006 : > We built an operational flight tracking and weather system that uses > Postgresql, > http://www.sonalysts.com/wXstation > > One data feed (FAA ASDI) uses both aircraft registration > numbers (tail numbers) and airline-assigned flight numbers. Typically > if you have the latter, you won't get the former. This feed only has > information for flights in the U.S. or to/from the U.S. The data feed also > includes flight plans, so it wouldn't be too hard > to build up a flight number schedule over a short period of time. > > Outside the U.S. the problem is more difficult. Thanx, unfortunately our flights are 90% in middle east/asia. Are you aware of any such feed in production? > > > Has anyone from the postgresql camp ever solved such a problem? > > > > -- -Achilleus