Service-Oriented Architecture In the Airline Industry

EDS had previously launched a multiyear project designed to migrate key airline service applications away from the IBM Transaction Processing Facility solution and toward an SOA leveraged best-of-breed solution. As part of that effort, EDS established a series of three proof-of-concept tests designed to evaluate the performance of the Microsoft SOA platform in an airline reservation application environment.

The Microsoft platform met or exceeded all three proof of concept tests, thus proving the ability of their solution to handle high throughput and availability requirements in the airline application environment.

In this paper, we examine key trends in the air services industry, the emergence of the SOA solution and the expanding partnership between Microsoft and EDS. We also describe the specific proof-of-concept tests applied to the Microsoft SOA solution and explore the technical and business potential those positive test results hold for the air services industry sector, Microsoft and EDS.