I 1 Enable combination rules between offers

Description

Enable the API offer reply to provide in a structured manner the minimal information that is necessary for the allocator or distributor to combine offers received from different OSDM content providers into a global offer for the final traveler.

Owner

• Jonas Glanzmann / Schlapbach Andreas (SBB)
• Patrick Heuget / Elisa Parmigiani (Amadeus)

Business Value

For customers

who do something

the solution

is a something – the ‘how’

that provides this value

unlike competitor, current solution or non-existing solution

our solution does something better — the ‘why’.

Business Outcomes

The measurable benefits that the business can anticipate if the epic hypothesis is proven to be correct.

Allow the allocator or distributor to implement a logic that is purely content driven, without requiring functional understanding, proprietary logic and product configuration from business experts.

Railways would benefit by being able to properly configure such fares in their system and having them immediately and automatically taken into account by the distributing systems.

This becomes more and more important with the development of the high-speed rail network, the liberalization of the market, the green attitude that is gaining momentum: the ability to combine offers from different providers will be more and more demanded.

Leading Indicators

The early measures that will help predict the business outcome hypothesis.

On international trips fares are always combined correctly.

Nonfunctional Requirements

Nonfunctional requirements (NFRs) associated with the epic.

• The combination logic most be fast (<50ms) and thus not include complete logic or rule engines can be implemented.
• The tag most be unique among all partners.

Context

• Scenario 1: In France: Combining Eurostar with some DB offers is only valid in combination.

• Scenario 2: On international trips there is no VAT from a border point to a destination if and only if it is part of an international trip. Otherwise from a trip from a border point to the destination, thus a national trip the VAT is required.

  Concerning Scenario 2, there is also the topic that a border point can be a virtual border point (see the Connection Point concept). The combination of offers from/to border point implies that it most be possible to receive offers from/to a virtual border point. Current allocators (GUS, PAO, NOVA/B2P) do not support this.

Solution Idea

The solution idea is based on the concept using a tag concepts. Thus if no tag exists, an offer can be combined with any other offer. Otherwise, if an offer has a set of tag it can only be combined with offers having a some tag.

By agreeing on tag, partners can bilateraly/multilateraly define combinations of offers.

Out of Scope

• Combination of tickets to one ticket (see I-18)
• Merging offers to one contract (aka. through fare)

Dependencies

Needed by I-18-Combinations-of-tickets-by-distributors.

Merged: https://github.com/UnionInternationalCheminsdeFer/OSDM/pull/166