Conversation Mode Booking System
A system to book events such as trips are discloses. The system provides a conversation mode that allows a booking to be created within retentive storage in a portable format. In one embodiment, this portable format is a string written in eXtensible Markup Language (XML). This format may be stored to a database using a single database access operation. According to another aspect of the system, a user may ignore selectable portions of the booking as the booking is being created such that an entire booking need not be discarded when it is determined that a single service or informational element included in that booking is no longer needed.
1 . A system for managing a booking for an event, comprising:
a user interface to receive data that describes the event;
persistence layer logic coupled to the user interface to store a first version of the data that describes the event in a first format and to store a second version of the data that describes the event in a second format;
business method logic to compare the first version of the event and the second version of the event to identify a subset of the data that is eligible to be ignored; and
allowing a user to select a portion of the subset of the data to ignore.
2 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the first version of the data is stored in a single database table during a single access operation.
25 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the first version of the data is stored in a portable string format.
3 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the second version of the data is stored as business objects.
4 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the first version is obtained by parsing the second version.
28 . A storage medium having stored thereon instructions to cause a processor to execute a method, comprising:
receiving data that describes a booking for an event;
using the received data to perform at least one of
canceling a service from the booking,
deleting information from the booking,
adding a service to the booking, and
adding information to the booking;
allowing a user to initiate a partial ignore function for a portion of the received data that has not yet undergone an end-of-transaction process, the partial ignore function to perform at least one of
reinstating a canceled service within the booking,
reinstating deleted information within the booking,
deleting an added service from the booking, and
deleting added information from the booking.