a leading provider of enterprise infrastructure and mobile software, has announced China's Ministry of Railway will revamp its nation-wide passenger train ticketing and reservation system using a suite of Sybase products including Sybase IQ analytics server, Sybase Mirror Activator and Sybase Adaptive ServerEnterprise (ASE) database together with Sybase professional services.
Covering more than 3,000 major train stations, China’s railway system runs an average of 2,000 trains per day, and serves 1 billion passengers per year, which have resulted in a complex ticketing and pricing infrastructure.
With the continuing growth of the network, the Ministry of Railway was searching for ways to improve the quality and competitiveness of its services.
"Since 1996, the ticketing system of China’s railway has been operating smoothly using Sybase's database management system," said Horace Chow, vice president of Sybase Asia Pacific and general manager of Sybase Greater China.
"Furthering its Unwired Enterprise vision, Sybase continues to meet the needs of the Ministry of Railway for a comprehensive solution that delivers high ROI, outstanding performance and scalability in the future. The strength of this customer relationship demonstrates Sybase's ongoing commitment to serving the Chinese market and growing with its customers."
Sybase IQ analytics server was chosen to ensure rapid response to queries for train schedule planning and coordination.
For China's rail network this was an essential requirement due to high usage periods during the Chinese New Year and summer months, when millions travel across the country by train.
Designed from the start as a data warehouse for analytics, Sybase IQ increases query performance up to 100 times faster than traditional data warehouse solutions.
It produces incredible results because of a unique architecture combining a column-based data structure with patented indexing and a scalable grid.
Dubbed the green data warehouse with a much lower demand for storage hardware than traditional database products, Sybase IQ was tested in a recent independent benchmark compressing a world’s record one petabyte of raw data to 85% with a 90% reduction in CO2 emissions over the data warehouse’s life time.
With the addition of Sybase Mirror Activator, the ticketing system will become even more secure, stable and reliable than the current implementation of Sybase ASE and its high availability option.
Handling more than 4.5 million ticket sales on some days, and 5,000 simultaneous purchases, the internal ticketing system is central to the operation of China’s rail network.
Eliminating the single point of failure with a multi-site disaster recovery architecture ensures the ticketing system will continue to operate in the event of a system failure.
Combining the benefits of disk mirroring with transaction replication, Sybase Mirror Activator ensures transaction consistency across all back-up databases, resulting in zero data loss during disasters.
Data updates are replicated across the country with Sybase Replication Server to provide the back-up for disaster recovery.
Sybase PowerBuilder helps accelerate application development and increases productivity.
In addition to its products, Sybase will also provide tailor-made consulting and support services to the ministry.
These include inspection services during peak traffic periods, field technical support to ticket offices, business system upgrades, and consulting services to increase application development efficiency and quality.
“The Ministry of Railway has enjoyed a successful relationship with Sybase for the past 11 years. Their robust database management solutions and customised technical support guarantee smooth operation of the rail network,” said a spokesperson from the Ministry of Railway.
“This latest cooperation further strengthens our strategic partnership as well as improves the reliability and quality of the ticketing system.”