BIL24 SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
BIL24 SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
PURPOSE OF THE SYSTEM
BIL24 ONLINE TICKETING PLATFORM means a complex of hardware and software designed to provide access to entertainment Events by selling tickets through a vast agent network. BIL24 implemented in JAVA software platform, and uses an enterprise-level object DBMS.
TICKET means the document, even in digital format, issued by BIL24 that legitimizes the Ticket Holder to access to the Event Venue. A ticket may be valid for any seat ("free seating") or for a specific one ("allocated seating"). Ticket contains all of the necessary details about the upcoming event.
MOBILE ELECTRONIC TICKET (MET) is the digital ticket equivalent of a paper ticket. MET exists only in mobile app. MET contains ticket details encrypted in QR-code. No need to print paper tickets so Ticket Holder can head straight to the ticket barrier and scans the MET QR-code on the phone.
FACE VALUE is the basic price printed on a Ticket which the Event owner has set before the addition of any booking fees, service charges or other extra costs.
SERVICE CHARGE is a fee, often calculated as a percentage of the price of each ticket, is therefore added by agents on top of a Ticket's Face value to cover both their costs of sale and as a charge for the service provided.
ORDER means a request from a customer to BIL24 to buy a specified amount of tickets. One Order may contains tickets for different Events. An Order which is already formed and redirected for payment may not be changed.
TICKET HOLDER means the person who legally holds a Ticket.
EVENT means an entertainment event including, without limitation, a concert, exhibition, sports, theatrical and/or music event to be held at various Venues. Event has the following details: title, description, event organizer, start/end date, posters and so on. Event can have one or more sessions with a schedule (day, hour). Sessions of the event may take place at different Venues at various cities
VENUE means any facilities or locations of any nature where the Event is being held. Venue has the following details: title, description, address, location, and so on. Venue can have different seating plans.
SEATING PLAN is an interactive SVG image that determines where Ticket Holders should take their seats. There are three types of seating plans: free seating, allocated seating and combined (free/allocated seating).
SEAT means the place where Ticket Holder will sit. The seat details (sector, row number and seat number) are printed on Ticket. A seat can be assigned to one of the following statuses: available, reserved, sold and unavailable.
EVENT owner means the person who sets the price of a ticket. This may be the event owner, organizer, producer, promoter or venue owner.
OPERATOR is a user role assigned to the employees of a company, which is managing BIL24. Users with this role are granted maximum rights to work.
ORGANIZER is a user role assigned to the employees of a company, which organizes the ticket sales for a specific Event. Organizer provides details of the Event and manages the sales process.
AGENT is a user role assigned to the employees of a company, which serves as the ticket agent for all Events. Agent sales tickets through his own interfaces (websites, mobile apps, box offices) Agent reports sales to Organizer.
CENTRAL SERVER is the main management component of the BIL24. Server interacts with its clients and communicates with enterprise-level Object DBMS. To ensure fail safety, a second server can be set up at a separate location. Bil24 uses a combination of system backups plus Roll Forward archiving. Roll Forward archiving helps to recover and to restore a database to the most recent state before a failure occurred.
FRONT-END is an interface that customers interact with directly. Every Front-end belongs to an Agent and has a unique ID (FID) with a corresponding token. FID and token are used to authenticate each request from BIL24 ticketing platform protocol. Some of the common Front-ends are: websites, web widgets, mobile apps, box offices. All tickets are sold through one of the available front-ends.
EXTERNAL TICKETING SYSTEM (ETS) means outside ticketing system connected to BIL24 via ETS Gateway. Interaction with ETS is needed to sell tickets on events originally uploaded to ETS.
BIL24 TICKETING PLATFORM PROTOCOL is a data transfer protocol designed specifically to sell Tickets. Protocol is implemented on JSON.
BIL24 APPLICATION PROTOCOL is based on Java object serialization. BIl24 applications use this protocol to transfer objects.
BASIC MOBILE APPLICATION (BMA) is used to sell tickets via mobile devices working on Android and IOS. Agent can use BMA with their FIDs and tokens.
EDITOR is an application used by Operators and Organizers to create Events and to control sales process.
REPORTER is an application used by Operators, Organizers and Agents to acquire information about Orders and Tickets, as well as Event access control data, statistic for protocol requests and so on. The data can be export to Microsoft Excel for further analysis.
MANAGER is an application used by Operators, Organizers and Agents to manage their accounts and interfaces.
WEB WIDGET is reusable, stand-alone Web application that can be embedded into third-party sites by any Agents. Web widget is intended for purposes of selling Tickets.
MOBILE ACCESS CONTROL SYSTEM (MACS) is a physical access control system for Events. MACS is an Android app for scanning Tickets on Event entry points.
POINT OF SALES (POS) is a web-interface application designed to sell tickets in Box office.
MOBLE POS (MPOS) is an additional BMA mode designed to sell Tickets for cash on mobile devices.
BIL24 is designed to sell tickets for entertainment events through various sales channels. The system encompasses both traditional and modern sales channels (box offices, websites, mobile apps and social media). MPOS is designed to develop new sales locations, such as hotels, travel agencies, touristic points and so on.
Bil24 major concept is availability of full volume of tickets, without quotas, which place restrictions on the volume of tickets that may be ordered through the Box Offices or online. The reason is that Event owners want to drop the obsolete practice of distributing ticket quotas among the Agents. For that reason, BIL24 develops gateways to External ticketing system (ETS).
Due to use of enterprise-level, high-speed NoSQL DBMS, Bil24 processes large amount of data in a reliable, fault tolerant manner. Bil24 users can get statistics and analytics in real-time mode.