Course 90

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Course 90 (spelling partly course '90 ; abbreviation for customer-friendly travel, information and sales system of the 90s ) was the name of a system used from 1989 to 2006 for the sale of tickets and other services on railways in Germany and other European countries.

In addition to travel information and tickets, all other services could also be sold with the system. This included, for example, reservations for train rides, hotel and rental car bookings, and the rental of parking spaces in multi-storey car parks. Internal rail operations, such as re-ordering ticket samples or printing reservation slips, were also possible.

Over the years, the system handled billions of information and sales processes.

history

background

Data station TA 1069, DB Museum Nuremberg

In 1978 the Deutsche Bundesbahn introduced the first electronic switches. In 1986 there were 1015 data stations and 2700 ticket machines in the sales outlets. The corresponding system was called Modernized Ticket Sales ( MOFA ). TA 1069 stations were used as client hardware . These had 8-inch disk drives that were used to transfer the sales data every four weeks.

Depending on the size of the sales points, there were sometimes separate counters for information, reservations, ticket sales and other, separate services.

Conception

With course 90, all services should be offered at one counter and both information and ticket printing should be significantly accelerated. Five previously separate procedures should be combined into a common system: electronic ticket sales ( MOFA system ), manual sales (cabinet counter), seat reservations ( EPA 80 system ), travel agency sales ( START system ) and timetable information. Ticket machines and sales via screen text were also planned. In contrast to the predecessor system MOFA, European-wide connections should also be queried with course 90. Sellers should also be informed of new offers and news within a day instead of weeks. It should also be possible to sell additional trains offered at short notice as well as remaining spaces shortly before departure via the system.

The system was part of the DB 90 strategy for modernizing the German Federal Railroad.

development

In April 1987 a pilot installation was introduced in the Mannheim travel center. In May 1987 the board of directors of DB approved the introduction. The system planning began in the same month. The system should initially be introduced on January 1, 1989. After the system planning was completed in October 1987, the project was increased and the opening date was postponed to May 1, 1989.

At the end of 1987, Tandem Computers was awarded the contract as general contractor to implement course 90. Initially, the software development with a value of six million DM was subcontracted. While the servers were to come from in-house, the terminals provided were 1100 PCD2- type stations . You should have a 40MB hard drive, printer, and 15-inch black and white monitor. Around 35 million DM were estimated for the entire project. In October 1988 the estimated costs were around 80 million DM. Course 90 was divided into around 90 sub-projects.

The PCD2 stations were to replace the TA 1069 type stations used up to that point in 1988 . Before Course 90 was available, these terminals initially ran with the START system . The HaCon company developed the first computer-aided timetable information in Germany for course 90 . With a special algorithm, information should be able to be output within six seconds.

At the end of 1988 an international working group of two dozen European railway companies began to think about an international distribution system known as the Railway Distribution System .

introduction

The system was introduced in 1988.

In 1990 the first stage of the project was largely completed. At the end of the year, the system was running on 1,100 terminals in 625 ticket issuing points. The previous systems MOFA and START were thus finally replaced. Around 15,000 terminals in Europe also had access to the system, e.g. for reservations.

The first individual terminals at large Deutsche Reichsbahn stations were installed in 1990. For a further expansion, the necessary lines for data transmission should initially be created by 1992. The Bundesbahn also offered course '90 to foreign railways through a subsidiary.

By the end of 1990 the Norges Statsbaner had taken over the module for seat reservations from Course 90. The Austrian Federal Railways and the Polish State Railways had taken over the entire system or essential components. Operations began in Poland in August 1991, followed by operations on the Luxembourg Railways in September 1991 .

Operation and further expansion

At the end of 1990, 5.2 million services (information, reservations, tickets) were being processed every week. With the timetable change in June 1991, ICE tickets were sold in the relationship pricing system. In 1990, the reservation system processed around 300,000 bookings from rail terminals per week. In addition, there were around 550,000 more reservations from travel agencies. The peak times of the system load for ticket bookings typically occurred on Friday mornings and, with the reservation system, on Monday.

The system has been widely criticized. At the end of December 1992, the system hit the headlines after the increased tariffs, which were only valid from January 1, 1993, were calculated at the end of December 1992 due to an error.

At the end of 1992 the system ran on around 2,500 terminals, and in mid-1995 on around 3,000.

In 1992 the system was expanded to include a credit card payment option. At the end of 1995 the Xenix operating system was replaced by SCO Open Desktop .

In 2004, around 250 million ticket sales per year were processed through the system. In addition, there were over 1.1 billion timetable information and around 90 million reservations. In addition to more than 4,000 travel centers and agencies, around 10,000 ticket machines accessed the system. The Deutsche Bahn call center, internet sales and major customers were also connected to the system. The application was at that time mainly in C written.

Replacement by NVS

The board of directors of Deutsche Bahn classified course 90 in a report to the supervisory board at the beginning of 2001 as an “outdated communication network with considerable technical risks”, which should be replaced by the beginning of 2003 in all travel centers and ticket offices of the DB. The technical possibilities of course 90 are "exhausted", there is a lack of suitable personnel for the outdated software. In connection with major maintenance problems, the risk of a temporary total failure increases.

Course 90 should be replaced by a new sales system for the introduction of the new price system , which has been postponed several times . After several delays, the relevant steering group finally decided to introduce the system initially on the basis of the existing sales system, despite the considerable risks. The new price system was introduced in December 2002 on the basis of course 90.

In 2001 the development of the course 90 successor New Distribution System ( NVS ) began. Up to 140 employees of Deutsche Bahn worked on it. The system acted as middleware . Course 90 was initially maintained as the backend.

Course 90 should be shut down on November 1st, 2005 and completely replaced by NVS. After the changeover at travel agencies took longer than planned, operations were extended. The system should then be shut down on December 31, 2005. Due to difficulties, the parallel operation of course 90 and NVS was extended beyond December 31, 2005.

technology

For the 2000 price-to-90 terminals initially were Xenix - 386 machines from Siemens used. The terminals had black and white screens and printers that could also read barcodes from the back of the tickets. About six megabytes on each of the 80 megabyte hard disks were used for up to 600 frequent relationships; the central computer in Frankfurt was queried for other connections. The terminals organized themselves and saved those connections locally that were frequently queried on site. The last 4,000 sales were cached on the hard drive and also on a 1.2 megabyte floppy disk and deleted three days after the upload to the server. Changes and new offers were always imported from midnight. In the early 1990s, the terminals downloaded around 100 to 200 kilobytes of data every week.

The central server was in the data center of the Federal Railway Directorate in Frankfurt am Main. It was formed in the early 1990s by three tandem systems that were designed as parallel computers. The course 90 system ran on a tandem nonstop cyclone mainframe computer, the associated reservation system on ten nonstop VLX machines. Another VLX machine (with four CPUs) served as a development and test system. The machines were one below the other, each with two four megabytes per second fiber optics . Initially, around 600 programs with a total of 900,000 lines of source code ran on the host system. The communication with the clients initially ran via the so-called IN , the integrated network of the Deutsche Bundesbahn (an X.25 network).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h 1990 annual review of the Deutsche Bundesbahn . In: The Federal Railroad . tape 67 , no. 1 , 1991, p. 69 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Fritz Jörn: Computers at the ticket office have finished learning after two shifts . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . July 3, 1990, p. T1 .
  3. ↑ Federal Railroad Marketing: Mute salespeople set the tone . In: Marketing . No. 4 , 1986, pp. 6 .
  4. ↑ a b c d DB system with trend-setting accents for foreign state railways: Course `90 should only rarely call programmers to the scene . In: Computerwoche . No. 46 , 1990 ( online ).
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Outdated TA diskette stations are scrapped: the Federal Railroad travels with tandem on course '90 . In: Computerwoche . No. 51 , December 18, 1987 ( computerwoche.de ).
  6. ↑ a b c d e Fritz Timm: COURSE '90 . In: Die Bundesbahn , 10/1988, pp. 913–916.
  7. ^ F. Timm: Course '90', a new future-oriented sales system in the passenger transport of the Deutsche Bundesbahn . In: Railway technical review . tape 36 , no. 9 , 593, ISSN  0013-2845 , p. 593-598 .
  8. ↑ a b Tandem Computers. Order for "Course 90" . In: Handelsblatt . No. 241 , December 16, 1987, pp. 17 .
  9. ↑ a b Railways plan joint sales . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 10, 1988, ISSN  0174-4909 , p. R1 .
  10. ↑ a b Bundesbahn takes over locomotive function for Btx . In: Handelsblatt . No. 202 , October 19, 1988, p. 25 .
  11. ^ Peter Waldinger: Information processing at the DB . In: The Federal Railroad . 10/1988, pp. 909-911.
  12. ↑ a b New solution based on tandem computers and Siemens PCs: Bahn wants to create an open network of computers . In: Computerwoche . No. 46 , 1988 ( computerwoche.de ).
  13. ↑ a b Annual review 1991 of the Deutsche Bundesbahn . In: The Federal Railroad . tape 68 , no. 1 , 1992, p. 81 .
  14. ↑ Christian Siedenbiedel: The everyday drama at the ticket counter . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 246 , 1999, ISSN  0174-4909 , p. 73 .
  15. ↑ a b Railway customers unbuttoned too much money . In: Nürnberger Nachrichten . December 29, 1992.
  16. ^ A b Heinrich Vaske: Telegram . In: Computerwoche . No. 24 , June 16, 1995, pp. 2 .
  17. ↑ Bahn now also accepts credit cards . In: Computerwoche . No. 25 , 1992.
  18. ↑ a b Bahn relies on a new sales system . In: Computerwoche . No. 10 , March 5, 2004, p. 46-47 .
  19. ^ A b Klaus Ott : Bahn threatens fiasco with ticket sales . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . April 5, 2001, p. 23 .
  20. ↑ Interface to course 90 longer online . In: FVW international . No. 11 , May 13, 2005, ISSN  0939-6039 , p. 57 .
  21. ↑ Quickly switch to the rail mask . In: FVW international . No. 31 , December 21, 2005, ISSN  0939-6039 , p. 55 .
  22. ↑ Virtual waiting time . In: FVW international . No. 2 , January 20, 2006, ISSN  0939-6039 , p. 72 .