Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Reservation – check-in – or booking display for reserved space
Reexamination Certificate
1998-07-02
2001-09-25
Cosimano, Edward R. (Department: 2161)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Reservation, check-in, or booking display for reserved space
C705S005000, C705S400000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06295521
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND
This invention relates to computerized travel planning systems.
Travel planning systems are used to produce itineraries and prices by selecting suitable travel units from databases containing geographic, scheduling and pricing information. In the airline industry, fundamental travel units include “flights” (sequences of regularly scheduled takeoffs and landings assigned a common identifier) and “fares” (prices published by airlines for travel between two points). The term “itinerary” is often used to refer to a sequence of flights on particular dates, and the term “pricing solution” is often used to refer to a combination of fares and itineraries that satisfies a travel request.
The databases usually contain schedule information provided by airlines, typically in the so-called Standard Schedules Information Manual (SSIM) format, and usually fares published by airlines and resellers, typically provided through the intermediary Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO). The database may also contain “availability” information that determines whether space is available on flights, or this may be obtained through communication links to external sources such as airlines.
Presently, so-called computer reservation system (CRSs) operate to produce fare and schedule information. There are four generally known computer reservation systems that operate in the United States, Sabre®, Galileo®, Amadeus® and WorldSpan®. The typical CRS contains a periodically updated central database that is accessed by subscribers such as travel agents through computer terminals. The subscribers use the computer reservation system to determine what airline flights are operating in a given market, what fares are offered and whether seats are available on flights to make bookings and issue tickets to clients.
The computer reservation systems typically conduct searches using the information contained in the database to produce itineraries that satisfy a received request. The search results are sorted and returned to the requester's computer for display.
Typically, the number of possible itineraries and pricing solutions that are returned by a CRS is a small portion of the total set that may satisfy a passengers request.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to one aspect of the invention, a travel planning system includes a server process that determines travel planning information in response to travel request information and a client process that receives said travel planning information. The client process includes a manipulation process that operates on the travel planning information. In one embodiment, the manipulation process can operate on the travel planning information in accordance with at least one user preference input.
According to another aspect of the invention, an airline travel planning system includes a scheduler that produces a set of flights in response to a user specified query, a faring system that provides fares for the sets of flights, and which represents the sets of flights and fares as a set of logically manipulatable nodes in a data structure. The system also includes an enumeration process that processes the data structure to extract flight-fare components from nodes in the data structure.
According to a still further aspect of the invention, a travel planning system includes a server process that in response to at least one travel destination and at least one travel origin determines a set of pricing solutions, said set of pricing solutions represented by a structure that contains a plurality of logically combinable entries that represent a second plurality of pricing solution entities and a client process that receives said pricing solution structure. The client process includes an enumeration process that extracts pricing solutions from the structure.
According to a still further aspect of the invention, a travel planning system includes a server process that in response to at least one travel destination and at least one travel origin determines and represents a set of pricing solutions by a directed acyclic graph data structure and a client process that receives said directed acyclic graph. The client process uses the directed acyclic graph representation to enumerate in response to user preferences a set of pricing solutions.
According to a still further aspect of the invention, an airline travel planning system includes a server computer and a server process executed on said server computer, said server process including a search process to search for set of pricing solutions that determine possible set of pricing solutions in accordance with at least one destination and at least one origin, said search process representing said set of pricing solutions in the form of a directed acyclic graph and a client computer and a client computer process responsive to the set of pricing solutions represented in the form of the directed acyclic graph. The client process including a manipulation process that manipulates the set of pricing solutions in the form of the directed acyclic graph representation in response to user preferences. The manipulation process includes a pruning process responsive to user preferences that alters the directed acyclic graph representation in such a manner so as to eliminate undesirable pricing solutions, and an enumeration process responsive to user preferences that produces a sorted subset of the pricing solutions represented in the directed acyclic graph.
One or more advantages are provided by the some of the aspects of the invention. The client process receives a set of pricing solutions provided in a compact representation. A preferred, compact representation of the set of pricing solutions is as a data structure comprising a plurality of nodes that can be logically manipulated using value functions to enumerate a set of pricing solutions. One preferred example is a graph data structure type particularly a directed acyclic graph that contains nodes that can be logically manipulated or combined to extract a plurality of pricing solutions. The client, can store and/or logically manipulate the set of pricing solutions to extract or display a subset of the set of pricing solutions without the need for additional intervention by the server.
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Poling: “Euram readying CompuServe link. (Euram Tours offers travel agents a data base of its special fares)”; Travel Weekly, v52, n84, Oct. 1993, pp. 1-2.*
“Towards desktop personal travel agents”, D.T. Ndumu, J.C. Collis and H.S. Nwana, BT Technol. J. vol. 16, No. 3, Jul. 1998, pp. 69-78.
DeMarcken Carl G.
Wertheimer Jeremy
Cosimano Edward R.
Fish & Richardson PC
ITA Software, Inc.
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