Table of contents
- Table of contents
- Introduction
- General rules for Offer parts
- 1. An offer should contain all offer parts per travel class and flexibility/product code.
- 2. Per passenger there should be an offer part for different parts of the trip, e.g. legs.
- 3. Even if a trip provides partial first class support only, a first class offer is provided.
- 4. If a part of a trip is free, an offer part with price 0 must be provided.
- 5. In one offer there should be no overlapping offer parts.
- 6. Any offer part of an offer must be bookable.
- General rules for fares
- 1. An offer should contain all fares per travel class and per flexibility/product code.
- 2. Per passenger there should be non-overlapping fares for the complete trip.
- 3. Even if a trip provides partial first class support only, a first class offer is always provided.
- 4. If a part of a trip is free, a fare with price 0 must be provided.
- 5. Pricing is individual (if possible).
- 6. In one offer there should be no overlapping fares.
- 7. Any fares of an offer must be bookable.
- Incorrect offer structures
Introduction
The OSDM offer structure is very powerful and flexible. However, if various parties interpret the structure in different ways, this can lead to interoperability issues. As interoperability is a key goal of OSDM, this document defines some rules for the structuring of offers. To ensure true interoperability, an offer must not only be syntactically valid, but also comply with these rules.
General rules for Offer parts
The following figure shows the overall structure of an offer in OSDM:
Individual offer mode means that each passenger is given individual admissions and reservations. Thus, in individual mode, for every passenger a distinct offer part should be provided. In collective mode, one offer part per trip part should be provided.
For offer parts such as admissions, reservations, or ancillaries, the following rules apply:
1. An offer should contain all offer parts per travel class and flexibility/product code.
Assuming first and second class are supported on the given trip, and there exist flexible, semi-flexible, and non-flexible products, then the offer should contain six offer parts per passenger:
- first class, flexible
- first class, semi-flexible
- first class, non-flexible
- second class, flexible
- second class, semi-flexible
- second class, non-flexible
2. Per passenger there should be an offer part for different parts of the trip, e.g. legs.
Assuming a trip consists of three legs, then the offer could contain three offer parts per passenger, one for each leg of the trip. Or one offer part could cover the first two legs and another offer part covers the third leg or vice versa. Or one offer part covers the whole trip.
Ideally, there should be no leg without an offer part. Especially a retailer must try hard to provide offer parts for all legs by calling various distributors and aggregate their contents.
In cases where only a sub part of the requested trip can be provided, this must
be expressed via teh tripCoverage attribute in the offer response.
3. Even if a trip provides partial first class support only, a first class offer is provided.
Assuming a trip consists of three legs, and one leg does not support first class. Then the offer should nevertheless contain a first class offer part for the whole trip.
4. If a part of a trip is free, an offer part with price 0 must be provided.
Again, assuming a trip consists of three legs, and one leg is free of charge. Then the offer should nevertheless contain an offer part for that leg, with price 0.
5. In one offer there should be no overlapping offer parts.
Overlapping offer parts would imply that a customer pays some parts of a trip twice.
6. Any offer part of an offer must be bookable.
If an offer part is not bookable, this is considered as a bug.
General rules for fares
Apart from offer parts, OSDM also supports the distribution of fares. Fares priced segments of a journey that can be combined by a distributor to create an offer.
The following rules apply for fares:
1. An offer should contain all fares per travel class and per flexibility/product code.
Contrary to offer parts, multiple fares might be needed to cover one leg as fares regional validity is not always bound to a trip. E.g a fare’s validity can end at a countries border with no train station or stop.
2. Per passenger there should be non-overlapping fares for the complete trip.
In similar spirit to offer parts, there should be a many fares as needed to
cover the requested section. The relevant attribute indicating the coverage is
the regionalConstraint attribute of a fare.
3. Even if a trip provides partial first class support only, a first class offer is always provided.
Similar to offer parts, even if a trip provides partial first class support only, a first class offer is always provided.
4. If a part of a trip is free, a fare with price 0 must be provided.
Similar to offer parts, if a part of a trip is free, a fare with price 0 must be provided.
5. Pricing is individual (if possible).
In fare mode pricing is always individual, i.e. each passenger has its fare(s).
6. In one offer there should be no overlapping fares.
Overlapping fares would imply that a customer pays some parts of a trip twice.
7. Any fares of an offer must be bookable.
If a fare is not bookable, this is considered as a bug.
Incorrect offer structures
Next examples of incorrect offer structures are given:
Here the same offer part is reused for two different passengers. This data structure make it difficult when booking as the same offer part of fare needs to be booked twice.
Next is an example where multiple offers need to be booked to get a complete booking for three passengers:
This would force a distributor to do complex book keeping to ensure that for all passenger a booking exists. Also multiple booking would be needed, which especially in error scenarios would require complex error handling and compensation mechanisms.