Case Study: HotelsCorp.com

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Case Study HotelsCorp.com

• Successfully Blending OO With Fusebox (and Other
  Cool Tricks)

2
HotelsCorp.com At A Glance

• The Business Plan
• Generate hotel bookings online, undercut big
  names (Expedia, Travelocity)
• Convert a percentage of bookings to tours
• Market through PPC on Search Engines
• Hotel revenue pays for the advertising
• Create location skin-able web sites
• N Landing Pages - Cater to Special Interests
• Sell hotels for revenue, tours for Timeshare
• Brings cost-per-tour down to 60 from 150

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HotelsCorp.com At A Glance

• Technical Challenges
• Legacy Integration - Reservation System and Sales
  and Marketing System (S.A.M.S)
• No API to S.A.M.S. - closed system
• First CFMX Project
• First OO with Fusebox Project
• Delivery expected in 3 months (!)

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Implementation Choices

• FB 3.0 on ColdFusion MX
• Multi Aliased Circuits (from 2002 FB Conf)
• Oracle back end (for web site)
• Oracle PL/SQL API to legacy system
• CFC Abstraction Layer
• Java for Asynchronous Search and Form Validation
  System
• A smattering of JavaScript (ugh)

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Legacy System - SAMS
SAMS System
DB Links

• Problems
• Business Logic in Forms
• Intimate Knowledge of DB required
• No clean separation between systems

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Why Objects?
Changes here
dont force changes here!
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HotelsCorp.com Architecture
SAMS
SAMS Web API
HotelsCorp API
8
Creating the Object Model
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Fusebox 3.0 Architecture

• Designed in Adalon
• Architecture diagram available for questioning

10
Skinning The Site

• Each web site is skinned through LAF and code
• orlando.hotelscorp.com
• smokies.hotelscorp.com
• vegas.hotelscorp.com (coming soon)
• All Fusebox code is reusable between destinations
• Identical process flows
• Changes to codebase affect all sites at once

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Skinning The Site

• Code sample from main fbx_Settings

lt!---------------------------------------------
Set up destination resource bundle variables
This includes the default market
effort -------------------------------------------
---gt ltcfset request.G_DESTINATION_ID 2gt ltcfset
request.G_LP_COOKIE_DOMAIN ".wgresorts.com"gt ltcf
set request.G_SECURE_SERVER_URL
"http//webdev1mx.wgresorts.com/ ltcfset
request.G_SECURE_SERVER_DOMAIN
".wgresorts.com"gt ltcfset request.G_DEFAULT_LP_TEXT
_ID "gatlinburg"gt ltcfset request.G_AREA_ATTRACTI
ON_ID_LIST "28,31,33,47,50,51,35, ltcfset
request.G_DESTINATION_DOMAIN "http//webdev1mx.w
gresorts ltcfset request.G_LP_ATTRACTION_TICKET_LI
NK "request.G_SELF_FUSE
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Skinning The Site

• Sample Resource Bundle

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Tying the Objects To Fusebox

• Main objects stored in the application scope as
  Singletons
• The request scope is your friend
• JSP forwarding in CFMX
• Abstracts persistence implementation (i.e.
  session, cookie, DB)

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Asynchronous Search

• Asynchronous Processes/Threads
• ColdFusion doesnt allow you to kick off your own
  threads
• Wrote a simple Java object that would open a URL
  in a Java Thread and die on completion
• Used for asynchronous search in HotelsCorp.com.

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Search Process Diagram
ColdFusion Server
Search Submitted
Store Search
Returns
Java Thread
?
Opens URL
CFM Search Code
Search Ends
META Refresh
Search Complete?
Search Results
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Lessons Learned

• In Fuses, dont explicitly reference object scope
• ltcfset object request.objectNamegt
• In Fuse
• ltcfset object getSomeObject()gt
• In Application File

ltcfscriptgt // return object thats brand
new function getSomeObject()
return CreateObject(component,
com.mywebsite.object) lt/cfscriptgt
ltcfscriptgt // return object stored
persistently in application scope function
getSomeObject() return
application.someObject lt/cfscriptgt
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Thats All, Folks!

• Thanks for watching!
• Please ask me any questions that you might have