Hierarchical Fare Data Structure for Air Shopping Efficiency
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current reservation systems and fare search engines face inefficiencies in processing air shopping requests due to the complexity of managing vast data volumes, rule restrictions, and the need for simultaneous scrutiny of flight schedules, availability, and business logic, which increases computational resources and decreases performance.
Innovation Solution
The system organizes data hierarchically using market, rule, and fare tables to efficiently generate itineraries by locating rule identifiers, valid fare classes, and combining connection paths based on user criteria, employing a processing element to determine fares and prioritize combinations of connection paths.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional fare search processing is used to find the best fare offers, then comprehensive fare comparison is achieved, but processing efficiency decreases and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the fare search processing into distinct phases: generating candidate itineraries based on route patterns, filtering candidates against fare rules, and ranking results. This segmentation allows the system to process only relevant fare data rather than examining all possible combinations, improving efficiency while maintaining comprehensive comparison.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary actions by pre-generating candidate itineraries using route patterns before applying fare rules. This preliminary filtering reduces the search space early in the process, so that subsequent fare rule application operates on a smaller, more manageable set of candidates, thereby improving overall processing efficiency.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the search space is expanded to include temporal functionality such as calendar shopping, then more itinerary options are available, but additional resources are required and efficiency decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by implementing temporal functionality selectively for specific search scenarios. The system determines whether calendar shopping or other temporal features are needed based on the user's request characteristics, applying these features only where appropriate rather than universally, thus maintaining efficiency while providing adaptability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses partial action by implementing temporal functionality as an optional enhancement rather than a mandatory feature for all searches. The system can operate with basic route-based searching when temporal features are not needed, and only activates additional temporal processing when specifically required, avoiding unnecessary resource consumption.
3Loss of information
If vast volumes of fare and rule data are directly accessed and cross-referenced, then complete fare information is obtained, but considerable effort is demanded in real-time processing
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the necessary fare and rule data needed for processing specific candidate itineraries. Rather than loading and cross-referencing all available fare and rule data, the system retrieves only those fare rules and pricing information that apply to the generated candidate routes, reducing data processing complexity while maintaining information completeness.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary layer of route patterns that mediates between the user's search criteria and the vast fare/rule database. This intermediary structure organizes potential itineraries in advance, allowing the system to query fare and rule data in a structured, efficient manner rather than performing brute-force cross-referencing of all data.
Data Source
AI summary
A system, method, and computer-readable medium for generating an itinerary in response to a request from a user are provided. The system includes a memory for storing a market table associated with a respective market, a rule table comprising rules associated with a respective fare class, and a fare table comprising fares associated with each fare class within a respective rule table. Each market table includes rule identifiers corresponding to at least one connection path, and each rule table is associated with a rule identifier corresponding to one of the rule identifiers contained within a respective market table. The system also includes a processing element for determining whether criteria associated with each connection path satisfies the rules within a respective rule table and determining a fare from a respective fare table for at least one connection path corresponding to each fare class associated with the satisfied rules within a respective rule table.