Download Navitaire-SQL2005 - Platform Modernization Alliance

Microsoft SQL Server
Customer Solution Case Study
Mission-Critical Airline Reservation System
deployed on SQL Server 2005
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Transportation
Customer Profile
Based in Minneapolis, MN, Navitaire
provides its Open Skies and New Skies
reservation systems to some 50 airlines
around the world.
Business Situation
Navitaire needed an operating system and
database that would help it scale to meet
the needs of its growing customer base.
Solution
Navitaire launched its new reservations
platform on Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005
Enterprise Edition (64-bit) database
running on the Microsoft Windows Server®
2003 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) operating
system.
Benefits
 Scalability
 Enhanced performance
 Much faster development
 Easier database management
“It’s fair to say we are developing our code much
faster since moving to Visual Studio 2005, the .NET
Framework, and SQL Server 2005.”
Mike Padgen, Principal Architect, Navitaire
The reservation system is at the core of an airline’s operations.
Navitaire serves some 50 airlines around the globe with its
reservation system, including industry leaders such as AirTran
Airways, Jetstar, and Ryanair. When Navitaire’s existing reservation
system, was approaching the limits of its processing capabilities for
some of its largest customers, a change was needed. Navitaire
upgraded to a solution using Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005
Enterprise Edition (64-bit) running on Intel-based 8-CPU 64-bit
database servers. To address this need, the company developed a
new reservation system, using Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 and
the Microsoft .NET Framework. The solution gave Navitaire the
scalability it required, enhanced performance, and simplified
database management.
“We tested the system
at three times the
normal workload of our
largest customer, and
SQL Server 2005 was
still giving us the
performance we
needed, and only
running at 20 percent
CPU utilization
compared to 80 percent
with the old system.”
Chris Stirlen, Principal Database Architect,
Navitaire
Situation
Navitaire's Open Skies airline reservation
system, and New Skies, its newly launched
reservation system, have been adopted by
some 50 airlines around the world, including
Air Asia, AirTran Airways, GOL, JetBlue
Airways, Jetstar, Ryanair, and SpiceJet. The
company’s reservation systems are believed
to be the world's largest airline Internet
booking engine, handling more than US$8.5
billion in travel over the Internet last year.
Navitaire is a leading provider of business
solutions to the airline industry and a pioneer
in implementing information technology and
business process solutions that enable
substantial profitability gains for its
customers. The company is headquartered in
Minneapolis, MN and employs 750 people
worldwide, with additional offices in Salt Lake
City, Austin, Sydney, Manila, Auckland,
London and Prague. Navitaire has enjoyed
double-digit growth over the last several
years, introducing new products and services
that include a wide variety of mission critical
airline systems covering the entire breadth of
the airline revenue life-cycle. The company is
a wholly owned subsidiary of Accenture, a
recognized leader in providing global
management consulting, technology services
and outsourcing to a wide variety of
industries.
Navitaire is an application service provider
(ASP), providing its customers with a
complete solution for their reservation needs.
Navitaire built its Open Skies reservation
system infrastructure using HP3000 mini
mainframe computers running HP operating
system and database products. Navitaire
needed to replatform its Open Skies airline
reservation system following HP’s
announcement it would no longer be
supporting the HP3000 within a few years.
Additionally, some of Navitaire’s largest
airlines’ significant growth plans would
require more processing power than the
HP3000 and its database could comfortably
support in the coming years.
As Navitaire prepared for future growth, it
determined it would replace its Open Skies
airline reservation system and create a new
reservation solution that would run on a 64bit architecture. As it sought the best platform
to carry it into the future, it needed a solution
with features including:
Scalability to keep pace with the growth of
its customer base
 Enhanced performance to meet its internal
goals for customer service
 A more efficient development environment

Solution
The company chose to use a Microsoft
solution in creating New Skies, its nextgeneration reservation system. Navitaire
developers used the Microsoft® Visual
Studio® 2005 development system and the
Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 to
create the new application for 64-bit
architecture. The .NET Framework is an
integral component of the Microsoft
Windows® operating system that provides a
programming model and runtime for Web
services, Web applications, and smart-client
applications.
Although mainframes have traditionally been
used to host airline reservation systems built
by many of its competitors, Navitaire decided
it could create the best platform for New
Skies using the Microsoft Windows Server™
2003 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) operating
system and the Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005
Enterprise Edition (64-bit) database, hosted
on Intel-based servers.
SQL Server 2005 is used for Navitaire’s
demanding online transaction processing
(OLTP) database. The Replication feature of
SQL Server 2005 can be used to create an
operational data store (ODS) on a separate
“Now that all of our
developers work within
Visual Studio 2005 and
the .NET Framework we
are freed from the
artificial programming
language boundaries
that used to exist. This
makes it much easier to
create, customize, and
maintain our
applications.”
Mike Padgen, Principal Architect, Navitaire
New Skies logical architecture
instance of SQL Server 2005 to enable
customers to access near real-time reporting
without hitting the OLTP database with
queries.
Navitaire’s OLTP databases are configured in
active-passive two-node clusters using
Microsoft Clustering technology to help
ensure high availability.
Solution Architecture
Developers at Navitaire created New Skies
using Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET
Framework. New Skies was designed using a
multi-tier architecture, which includes:

Client Tier. The New Skies client tier was
created as a set of smart client
applications, which provide rich
functionality and are capable of working in
a disconnected state connecting only to
exchange data with the application tier.
The client tier doesn’t include business
logic.
Web Tier. The New Skies Web tier hosts
Web-based user interfaces, TCP socket
services, and a Web service API for
accessing the business services layer of
the application tier. It communicates with
the business services of the Application
Tier using the .NET Remoting component of
the .NET Framework.
 Application Tier. The application tier
encapsulates all reservations and related
business logic, business entity
components, data access, and security of
the core reservation system. This promotes
consistent use of business logic at all tiers.
The business services of the application
tier access the database tier through a
data access abstraction layer.
 Database Tier. OLTP databases are hosted
on SQL Server 2005; New Skies databases
are protected through the use of a layer
that governs authorized create, read,
update, and delete access to the database.
The database tier also includes the
payments database, hosted on SQL Server
2005, for payment processing. A data
access layer protects database resources
from unauthorized access.
 Reporting Tier. The Replication feature of
SQL Server 2005 is used to update the
ODS database to provide near real-time
data for its customers’ access. Navitaire
currently uses its own reporting system to
access the OLTP system.

This basic architecture can be deployed
separately for each customer to give each
airline its own reservation and reporting
system. The tiers for each customer are
deployed on Intel-based 8-CPU 64-bit
database servers, typically with eight dualcore, hyperthreaded processors and 32
gigabytes (GB) of RAM.
The ODS database, can be even larger than
the OLTP databases. The ODS database for
some of Navitaire’s larger customers could
be about 1 terabyte, and hosted on a single
“SQL Server 2005
supports up to a
terabyte of memory, and
so far we are using less
than 32 gigabytes. This
gives us huge
scalability.”
Chris Stirlen, Principal Database Architect,
Navitaire
instance of SQL Server 2005. Total data
stored by Navitaire on SQL Server databases
could reach several terabytes once all of its
customers have been migrated to the new
system.
Benefits
Moving from the Open Skies platform to SQL
Server 2005 running on Windows Server
2005, hosted on 8-CPU 64-bit database
servers has given Navitaire a number of
benefits, including scalability, enhanced
performance, much faster development, and
easier database management.
Scalability
The company’s Open Skies system’s
infrastructure was reaching the limits of
performance that it could provide for some of
Navitaire’s largest clients. “Our old system
was maxing out, and CPU utilization for our
largest accounts was at about 80 percent
during times of peak demand,” says Mike
Padgen, Principal Architect, at Navitaire. “We
needed more processing power and the
ability to scale as quickly as possible to meet
the needs of our fast growing customers.”
The move to SQL Server 2005 and Windows
Server 2003 running on 64-bit hardware gave
the company the ability to scale. “SQL Server
2005 commonly supports five times the
number of transactions per second, and
we’ve seen peak performance spike as high
as 12 times the transactions per second,”
says Chris Stirlen, Principal Database
Architect at Navitaire. “Our CPU utilization
has gone from 80 percent to just 20
percent.”
The company also gains scalability because
of its multi-tier architecture. “With our Open
Skies system, applications and reporting ran
on the same CPUs as the database, which
could impact our ability to scale.” says
Stirlen. “With our new solution, we can just
add computers to the client tier, Web tier, or
anywhere else we need them. SQL Server
2005 supports up to a terabyte of memory,
and so far we are using less than 32
gigabytes. This gives us huge scalability.”
Enhanced Performance
The new solution has achieved Navitaire’s
performance goals.
“The response times we’re getting are even
better than our goals,” says Padgen. “We
recently converted a large customer over to
SQL Server 2005 and the 64-bit architecture.
One of our basic transactions is to look up
flight schedules and fares. We call this Get
Availability. Our goal has been to keep Get
Availability response time to a minimum. With
the new system, we process these
transactions more than three times faster.”
“We tested the system at three times the
normal workload of our largest customer, and
SQL Server 2005 was still giving us the
performance we needed and only running at
20 percent CPU utilization compared to 80
percent with the Open Skies system,” says
Stirlen. “That gives us plenty of room to
grow.”
Additional performance gains may be
possible when Navitaire rewrites some of its
code to take advantage of the native support
SQL Server 2005, which provides for the
common language runtime (CLR) component
of the .NET Framework.
“We have one function that does string
splitting because we need to pass in a
common separated string for architectural
reasons to get some data for updates,” says
Stirlen. “When I tested this function I found
that using CLR within SQL Server 2005, string
splitting was 50 times faster than performing
the string splitting the way we had been,
using T-SQL.”
“Our operations team
loves Online Indexing
because occasionally we
need to rebuild an index
to maintain high
performance. We serve
airlines around the
world, so it can be
challenging to find
convenient maintenance
windows.”
Chris Stirlen, Principal Database Architect,
Navitaire
Much Faster Development
Visual Studio and the .NET Framework give
Navitaire an integrated development
environment that is easier to work with and
that breaks down the programming language
barriers that used to separate its developers.
“In the past, we had to involve multiple teams
to make application changes,” says Padgen.
“The application team used multiple
languages and a proprietary source control
system. The user interface was created using
Microsoft Foundation Class tools, and our
Web developers used yet another language.
There was very little cross-over of our
developers. Now that all of our developers
work within Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET
Framework, we are freed from the artificial
programming language boundaries that used
to exist. This makes it much easier to create,
customize, and maintain our applications.”
Navitaire developers have enjoyed the move
to Visual Studio and the .NET Framework, and
noted an increase in productivity. “There was
some initial anxiety about embracing these
new development tools, just because the
change was so big,” says Padgen. “But the
benefits became immediately obvious.
Debugging, for example, is so much easier in
Visual Studio. Previously, we had to build our
own XML parsers and XML builders. The
developers had to write additional code from
scratch that isn’t needed with our new
development environment. It’s fair to say we
are developing our code much faster since
moving to Visual Studio 2005, the .NET
Framework, and SQL Server 2005.”
The easier development benefits customers
who need access to databases to create their
own applications, such as airport check-in
kiosks.
“Many of our customers want to access the
functionality of our system so they can write
some of their own supporting applications
and processes,” says Padgen. “The fact that
we can now easily expose functionality with a
Web service is a big benefit to the airline. On
the Open Skies system, we write our own
from-scratch proprietary interfaces to the
system, and it is a lot of work for both us and
the customer. With New Skies, we can easily
expose a standards-based Web service,
which makes it a lot easier for the customer
to integrate with our system.”
Easier Database Management
SQL Server 2005 is an easier database to
manage and maintain than the Open Skies’
system’s database. “We have gained great
manageability with our move to SQL Server
2005,” says Padgen. “Management Studio is
extremely easy to work with. Everything—from
basic database management through
creating business intelligence—seems to be
easier to do with SQL Server.”
Navitaire uses the Dynamic Management
View (DMV) feature of SQL Server 2005 in
fine-tuning query performance. “The new
DMVs are great because they let me watch
the system in production,” says Stirlen. “SQL
Server has self-diagnostics that give me
statistics on the server that I could never get
before. I can use SQL Server to identify the
slowest running queries, and use the Profiler
to trace a slow query and improve its
performance.”
The Online Indexing feature of SQL Server
2005 simplifies database management
because re-indexing can be performed
without taking the server down for
maintenance. “Our operations team loves
Online Indexing because occasionally we
need to rebuild an index to maintain high
performance,” says Stirlen. “We serve airlines
around the world, so it can be challenging to
find convenient maintenance windows.”
The company is also interested in the Table
Partitioning feature of SQL Server 2005. “We
For More Information
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Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
need Table Partitioning because we have
some large tables,” says Stirlen. “The
Booking History table for some of our largest
customers can exceed 100 million rows.”
For more information about the Microsoft
server product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx
Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is
comprehensive, integrated data management
and analysis software that enables
organizations to reliably manage missioncritical information and confidently run
today’s increasingly complex business
applications. By providing high availability,
security enhancements, and embedded
reporting and data analysis tools, SQL Server
2005 helps companies gain greater insight
from their business information and achieve
faster results for a competitive advantage.
And, because it’s part of Windows Server
System, SQL Server 2005 is designed to
integrate seamlessly with your other server
infrastructure investments.
For more information about Navitaire
products and services, call +1 (612) 3177000 or visit the Web site at:
www.navitaire.com
For more information about SQL Server
2005, go to:
www.microsoft.com/sqlserver
Software and Services
Microsoft Servers
− Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Enterprise Edition (64-bit)
− Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise
Edition (64-bit)
 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
 Technologies
− Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0
− Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis
Services
− Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting
Services

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case
study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, Visual Studio, Windows, the Windows logo, Windows
Server, and Windows Server System are either registered
trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the
United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are
property of their respective owners.
Document published September 2006
Hardware

Intel-based 8-CPU 64-bit database servers
with 32 GB of RAM