Conversation Mode Booking Method

• US 20090216572A1
• Filed: 04/27/2009
• Published: 08/27/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 08/09/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: David W. Rohy, Denise M. Anderson, Donna L. Sundstrom, Douglas W. Bock, Giriprasad Murugeshan, James Gibson, Khaja Moinuddin Mohammed, Michael J. Lawrence, Milton P. Baker, Mohd Saleem
• Original Assignee: David W. Rohy, Denise M. Anderson, Donna L. Sundstrom, Douglas W. Bock, Giriprasad Murugeshan, James Gibson, Khaja Moinuddin Mohammed, Michael J. Lawrence, Milton P. Baker, Mohd Saleem
• Inventors: Mohammed, Khaja Moinuddin, Sundstrom, Donna L., Bock, Douglas W., Murugeshan, Giriprasad, Baker, Milton P., Saleem, Mohd, Rohy, David W., Anderson, Denise M., Gibson, James, Lawrence, Michael J.
• Application Number:
  US12/430,387
• Publication Number:
  US 20090216572A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/5
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/02 Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events

Abstract

A method to book events such as trips are discloses. The method 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 method, 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.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of managing a booking for an event, comprising:

receiving data describing the booking;

storing the data in one or more database tables;

identifying a subset of the stored data that is eligible to be ignored; and

ignoring any portion of the subset of data that is selected by a user.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising performing at least one in a group consisting of:

reinstating a service that was canceled by the selected portion;

reinstating information that was canceled by the selected portion;

canceling a service that was added by the selected portion; and

canceling information that was added by the selected portion.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising removing the selected portion from the one or more database tables.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the storing step includes at least one of:

storing the data in a working booking table as an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) string; and

storing the data in multiple booking database tables as business objects.

5. The method of claim 4, and further including obtaining the XML string by parsing the business objects.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying step includes:

retrieving an updated copy of the booking that was updated with the received data;

retrieving a previously saved copy of the booking; and

determining differences between the updated copy and the previously saved copy to identify the subset of data that is eligible to be ignored.