Customer Details:
CRIS & Indian Railways
All Over India
Brief on PRS
Reserved travel by Indian Railways is facilitated by the Passenger Reservation
System (PRS). PRS provides reservation services to nearly 1.5 to 2.2 million
passengers a day on over 2500 trains running throughout the country. The PRS
Application CONCERT (Country-wide Network of Computerized Enhanced Reservation
and Ticketing) is the world’s largest online reservation application, developed and
maintained by CRIS. The system currently operates from 5 Data centres. The server
clusters are connected together by a core network that enables universal terminals
across country, through which the travelling public can reserve a berth on any train,
between any pair of station for any date and class.
Opportunity:
CRIS wanted to deploy thin client based Dumb Terminals at PRS ticketing counters,
across India which can’t be sustained the different climatic conditions encounters in
each region as all the users run the same PRS ticket booking application.
Challenges:
- Highly secured & lower maintenance client required for users to enable lesser downtime in
terms of hardware & software - Should be able to sustain different climatic condition like very high & low temperatures,
humid conditions and on top of that no air conditioning environment at most of the places - Easy to Implement, Configuring & troubleshoot
- Data security (Highly confidential information which should not be allowed to taken away
from any of the PRS counters) - Low footprint to ensure minimum physical space required, since counters has limited space
Server, Data Base, Application & other details:
- HP Server (Itanium)
- Server OS – HP AUX
- Database ASE_CE (Adaptive Server Enterprise Cluster Edition)
- Client Application in C++
Requirements:
- CRIS PRS application runs on emulation suite developed in C ++
- The client OS must be write protected with ability to download various PRS forms required
at the time of login, to reduce network load and run the application faster. - Fare Display connectivity thru serial port
- ISCII library support to print Hindi on tickets
- Dot Matrix Printer used for ticket printing with both parallel and serial port support
Solution:
Deployed Breeze ECT Thin Client based Dumb Terminal
Configuration:
Operating System – Embedded Customised Linux
Software – Emulation suite, ISCII and other required dependencies
Hardware- 1.8Ghz Dual Core processor, 1 GB RAM, 4GB FLASH,6 USB ports, one Parallel printer Port,
Two Serial Port etc.
By deploying Breeze thin client following objectives were achieved in addition overcoming
all the challenges mentioned above –
- As the thin clients are without any moving part, the maintenance is very low
compared to regular desktop - The OS & software’s are stored in write protected Flash drive which ensured faster
speed - With USB storage disabled, no unauthorised access to data
- No fiddling with configuration etc.
- Protection from viruses and malware attacks
- Consumes ¼ power compared to a regular desktop, ensuring Hugh savings on power
bills