3 ms·

I've got first hand experience in this as we are working on it right now. This problem is largely due to the closed and archaic nature of the GDS systems that

I've got first hand experience in this as we are working on it right now. This problem is largely due to the closed and archaic nature of the GDS systems that are the source of truth. These systems have been running for 40+ years and no one wants to touch them to make substantive changes. As a result, modernisation is attempted via layers on top of layers that just add complexity confusion. There is a difficult routing and fare calculation problem here, coupled with a distributed consensus problem. While better solutions to this exist or may exist, the biggest hurdles are the organisational ones.

BubRoss 7y ago
Why is the routing and fare calculation a big problem? I can see writing to a legacy system being slow, but I would think there could be constant caching somewhere of the data as it is read by anyone, and thus reads could be mostly fast, making routing calculation fast. Then it would be a matter of checking for validity of chosen routes.
longcommonname 7y ago
I worked at a GDS and you're pretty close. There's a component of not wanting to change, but when they do they are burdened by their fragile infrastructure and thousands of competing projects. Very small changes would cause defects in one project that one customer uses. While massive bugs are ignored.