UAL has built a loosely-bound architecture that also allows it toexchange messages back and forth, which is standardised onXML.

Lyons says UAL's future integration challenges are to enable greaterB2B integration with its Star Alliance partners. "The challenges wewill have is to be as ready as we may be in taking out Webservices - or any technology - for integration, and we have to strugglewith how our partners would be ready for all of that. It's one thingto be in control of our own store, and another to have to work withour partners so we can have seat and price sharing. If we aresuccessful, a [Lufthansa] customer could walk up to any Star Alliancepartner's ticket agent with a problem about his travel, and the agentcould help that customer as well as any Lufthansa agent. That would beour goal."

The information that it is working to share with its 12 Star Alliancepartners would include flight data to make sure information on flightsthat customers are booked on is current. UAL uses an event-drivenmodel to share information dynamically with its Star Alliancepartners. Anytime that its partners have a change in their flightinformation, it is published to all alliance partners. This dataintegration is done on Tuxedo.

Another challenge with getting consistent information out to customersis the data integrity problem. UAL uses Extract Transform and Load(ETL) software to get information out of its data warehouses and datamarts consistently. "We are pretty good at getting data integrity fromthe informational side of our house. The operational side of the housecomes from stovepipe applications that have been around for 30 years.The idea is, how do we go in there when they have to have the sameinformation? They each have their own copy of the same informationnow. That's the data integrity challenge for us. So we are using themiddle-tier integration layers with event-driven technology to allowus to have a single event push that information out to our operationalsystems," he says.

Although it is hard to put a value on its integration effort, Lyonssays customer feedback shows they appreciate getting consistentinformation on whether their flights were on time, or cancelled,across all touchpoints. "I can't tell you what this is worth, but wecouldn't afford not to do it," he says.