Dial-A-Seat - Case Study
Online Ticket Sales Web Application
Company profile
Dial-A-Seat acts as a ticket agent for a number of different performing shows, offering
a call-centre and ticket printing and issuing solution.
Business situation
Having been awarded a significant contract with a major
show provider, Dial-A-Seat needed urgently to add web-based ticket sales to its
route to market. It is also a consideration that the solution should
support other shows.
Technical situation
For many years, Dial-A-Seat have used a management system created using the Equinox
database development environment. The current system has supported the needs
of the company but had no functionality to support web-based ticket sales.
Solution
Having a unique, thorough experience of its own Equinox product enabled Compsoft
to quickly understand the existing application and to build a cost-effective
solution around it. Conscious of reliability and performance, it was obvious
that Web hosting at Dial-A-Seat would be unnecessarily expensive and would not offer
the reliability required.
Compsoft created a solution built around Web Services, using Microsoft ASP.NET
to create an online booking portal that could be hosted off-site and use XML
to communicate in real-time with the Equinox database hosted at Dial-A-Seat.
Benefits
Compsoft achieved a cost effective solution through minimal development of
the existing management system.
Reliability is assured through off-site hosting and is possible through use
of XML-based web services to communicate in real time.
Dial-A-Seat is now able to offer 24/7 availability of booking services for a number
of the shows it represents and is able to avoid any increase in staff costs
when winning new business.
The Microsoft ASP.NET platform provides scalability and facilitates a longer
term move to a wholly browser based application that could be used from any
location including box offices on site.
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