FLIGHT RESERVATION USING RECOMMENDATION SYSTEM
BY
PRASAD KEMBURU
B.TECH., JAWAHARLAL NEHRU TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY, 2003
HYDERABAD, INDIA
A REPORT
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
MASTER OF SCIENCE
Department of Computing and Information Sciences
College of Engineering
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY
Manhattan, Kansas
2007
Approved by:
Major Professor
Dr. Daniel Andresen
ABSTRACT
With the advancement in technology in the filed of e-commerce, the problem with
information overload has been at its peak. Thus there should be some cognitive solution
to the problem at hand. The first and foremost solution to this problem would be a
‘recommender system’, which is information filtering technique aimed at presenting the
user with the most viable options based on certain reference characteristics. These
characteristics are learnt from either explicit or implicit feedback provided by the user.
But, past experiences show that that only a few numbers of users provide explicit
feedback. The current ‘Flight Reservation using recommendation system’ uses implicit
feedback to overcome the problem.
Flight reservation systems have been implemented for years, basically from manual to
computerized reservation system. The demand for fast and secure online Flight
reservation systems has been increasing day by day. The effective use of the latest
technology is the backbone for the design of a good system. The main objective of the
project is to provide the user with desired selection options, real-time information and
recommend the user of an itinerary that best fits his preferences, based on his previous
purchases. The preferences are stored as a case base for future personalized
recommendations.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES
LIST OF DATABASE TABLES
ACKNOWLWDGEMENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 FLIGHT RESERVATION CLIENT
1.2 PROBLEMS
1.3 OBJECTIVE
1.4 INTENDED AUDIENCE
1.5 OVERALL STRUCTURE
2. RELATED WORK
2.1. OTHER APPROACHES
2.2 COMPARISON WITH OTHER EXISTING METHODS
3. IMPLEMENTATION
3.1 SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
3.2 TECNOLOGIES USED
3.3 DATABASE SCHEMA
3.4 MODULES
3.5 FLOW CONTROL
3.5.1 USER FLOW CONTROL
3.6 DESIGN
3.7 SCREEN SHOTS
4. TESTING
4.1 ANTS LOAD
4.2 ANAYLSIS
4.2.1 RESULTS
4.5 HARNESSIT – UNIT TESTING
4.5.1 CORRECTNESS
4.6 PROBLEMS FACED
4.7 LESSONS LEARNT
5. FUTURE WORK
5.1 EXTENSIONS
6. CONCLUSION
REFERENCES AND/OR BIBLIOGRAPHY
APPENDIX A
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my major professor, Dr. Daniel Andresen, for his valuable
guidance and encouragement throughout this project.
I would also like to thank Dr. Scott Deloach and Dr. Neilsen for serving on my
committee and for their valuable suggestions.
I would like to give my word of thanks to Mrs. Doina for her generous support
and invaluable guidance with my project.
Finally, I would like to thank my family for their love and support. I’m grateful to
them for the confidence they had in me that I would prosper in my education in the US.
1. INTRODUCTION
The problem of information overload occurs when the user is provided with too many
options to choose from, most of which may not be what the user is looking for. Hence an
effective system would capture the user preferences from his previous purchase history
and use the same in recommending one on his next visit.
The user preferences are stored every time he makes a purchase. Explicit feedback from
the user could be one way of collecting these preferences. But, explicit feedback often
times may not be as effective, as it may result in boring the user and hence increasing the
user’s frustration level. But one way of working around this problem would be to collect
implicit feedback from the user by mining for information from the data stored in the user
profile.
The aim of this project is to use the .net framework in effectively creating an online flight
reservation system that provides the user with a friendly interface and is fast and secure.
The key aspect of the system being the ability to recommend the user, the itineraries that
best fit his selection, based on his purchase history. The system takes in the user input
and generates a list of itineraries that the user is free to select from depending on his
personal preference. The input essentially contains the source, destination, and date of
departure of journey. The inputs required are strongly imposed by validating the required
fields, which ensures the user selections are correct and prompt. A list of results is then
displayed dynamically by searching the database for the entries that meet the input
criterion. The system is developed using ASP.NET with VB.NET and SQL SERVER
2000.
1.1 THE FLIGHT RESERVATION CLIENT
The Flight reservation client (FRC) is a recommender system that searches for multiple
airlines concurrently for flights on behalf of the user. It has a good web interface the
enables the user to search for flights. The FRC takes in the user input and generates a set
of itineraries that meet the input criterion. The result set usually consists of a significant
amount of flights. The user might get overwhelmed by the large number of choices.
Hence a recommender system is incorporated the sorts out the results set based on the
user’s purchase history. To make accurate recommendations, the FRC should be able to
learn the user preferences. So, the system stores information about the user preferences,
every time a purchases is made. It uses the stored preferences as the sort criterion in the
recommendation process. The FRC uses the feature weighting technique.
1.2 FEATURES OF THE SYSTEM
The system is developed using ASP.NET using VB.net and SQL Server 2000 as back
end. The FRC makes personal recommendations to users based on their purchase history.
The key features of the FRC include:
a) It makes personalized recommendation to each user
b) It collects implicit feedback from the user as opposed to explicit feedback which is
associated with a high cost of cognitive load placed on the user
c) Provides the user with the ability to sort the results based on his temporary preferences.
1.3 INTENDED AUDIENCE
The FRC system aims at reducing the cognitive load on the user by making
recommendations based on implicit feedback. The recommendation process is not simply
specific to the flight reservation domain. It could be used in any domain that involves
making recommendations to users based on implicit feedback.
1.4 OVERALL STRUCTURE
1. The rest of the paper deals with the other approaches for developing this project.
2. The implementation section describes the system architecture, the database schema, the
technologies used, flow control, Design of the project described using the UML
diagrams, and the screen shots.
3. The Testing section describes the testing tools used to test the performance of the
application and a detailed review of the results.
4. The Future work section discusses the advantages and shortcomings of the current
recommendation strategy. It also some further techniques that could be investigated.
5. Finally, the Conclusion section concludes the report.
2. RELATED WORK
2.1. OTHER APPROACHES
2.2 COMPARISON WITH OTHER EXISTING METHODS
3. IMPLEMENTATION
3.1 SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
A pictorial description of the system architecture for the Flight reservation system is
shown below. This has been designed using Microsoft Visio 2007.
Figure 1 – SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
USER
Front end ASP.NET, HTML and VB.NET
Middleware ASP.NET Framework, IIS SERVER
SQL SERVER 2000
DATABASE
The architecture of the entire system is shown in the figure 1. This project was developed
using ASP.NET and VB.net. The user starts at the Search page. He could do the search
for the Flights, with or without logging in. ASP.net and VB.net have been used for the
creation of the Forms and the implementation respectively, while SQL Server 2000 was
used as the back end. The control flow between the pages is described in the subsequent
paragraphs.
The user starts at the Search page. He could login straight away or perform a
search, select an itinerary, confirm it and then login. Let’s look at the Flow control when
the user opts to search first. The user starts with selecting the criterion for search.
1. One-way or Roundtrip by selecting the respective radio button.
2. The Source and the destination for the journey are then selected from the
drop-down lists next to from and to respectively. Requirement validation has
been implemented to make sure that both the entries are selected and are not
the same.
3. Using the calendar control, the departure date and return date are selected. For
One-way, only the departure date is selected. Again, validation has been done
for the correct selection of dates in calendar control. The validation is done so
that, the user doesn’t select a date that is not valid, for example a date that is
before the current date. In case of Roundtrip, validation has been done so that
the return date is always later then the current date.
4. The user could select the optional preferences such as the number of adult
tickets, number of child tickets and the class of ticket, namely economy or
business.
5. Once the required fields are selected, the user clicks the Search button. The
Search results are fetched, the user is re-directed to the Results page.
6. In the Results page, the user is provided with a list of itineraries that meet the
selected criterion. The user could take a look at the detailed itinerary by
clicking on View Details, Which opens a new window with the complete
itinerary. Clicking on the Select button redirects the user to the Confirmation
page.
7. Once the user clicks the Confirm button, he is taken to the login page, where
he could login and confirm the itinerary. New users could register through the
Signup page.
8. After the user logs in and confirms his itinerary, he is redirected to the home
(Search) page.
3.2 TECNOLOGIES USED
Microsoft Visual Studio.NET
The Visual Studio.NET framework includes a unified set of objects available on server
and client platforms. It is the next generation of Microsoft's Visual Studio platform.
Visual Studio.NET provides developers with a full-service Integrated Development
Environment for building ASP.NET Web applications, XML Web Services, desktop
applications, mobile applications for the .NET framework. It supports multiple
languages- Visual C#.NET, VB.NET, Visual C++.NET and Visual J#.NET and provides
transparent development and debugging facilities across these languages in a multilanguage solution.
ASP.NET
ASP.NET is a set of web development technologies marketed by Microsoft.
Programmers can use this set of technologies to build web applications, Desktop
Applications and XML web services. Its main features are described in the following
paragraph.
It builds the real world applications in an easy manner. It gives a lot of flexibility
to choose the language you want to program in. It supports more than 25 .Net languages.
ASP.NET rich output caching can increase the performance to a great extent. If caching
is enabled, the page is executed once and the results of the web page are saved. This
makes the results easily available to the next user who requests this page. ASP.NET
makes it easy to call XML Web Services from the application and this allows
applications to communicate the data over the Internet regardless of the programming
language and OS.
SQL Server 2000
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system produced by
Microsoft. It supports a superset of Structured Query Language SQL, the most common
database language. It is commonly used by businesses for small to medium sized
databases, and in the past 5 years large enterprise databases and competes with other
relational database products for this market segment.
[1]
JavaScript
JavaScript developed by Netscape is used to create dynamic web pages. It is widely used.
JavaScript can put dynamic text into a HTML page, react to events, read and write
HTML elements. It could be used to validate data.
JavaScript works with HTML in the following manner.
<html>
<head>
<title>JavaScript Page</title>
<script LANGUAGE=“JavaScript”>
<! -- actual JavaScript follows below
alert (“Welcome to the Test Site!”);
// ending the script -->
</script>
</head>
<body> Content of the Page </body>
</html>
I have used JavaScript confirmation alerts at all the required locations.
Microsoft Visio:
Microsoft Visio is diagramming software for Microsoft Windows. It uses vector graphics
to create diagrams. Microsoft Office Visio 2007 makes it easy for IT and business
professionals to visualize, explore, and communicate complex information.
Visual Paradigm 6.0 for UML:
Visual Paradigm for UML is a UML CASE Tool supporting latest version of Unified
Modeling Language (UML) and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) from
Object Management Group (OMG). In addition to the UML modeling support, it
provides business process modeling, object-relational mapping generator for Java, .NET
and PHP.
3.3 DATABASE SCHEMA
There are 12 database tables used in the design of the FRC.
Figure 1: tblUserType
The tblUserType table has 2 entries to store the details about the user. The UserTypeId is
a unique id which identifies the type of the user, to determine if the user is an admin
(administrator) or a regular user.
Figure 2: tblUser
The tblUser stores the information about the Users that are registered. Every time a new
User is created, the information is updated into this table. The names of the Columns are
self-explanatory. The UsertypeId determines if the user is administrator or a regular user.
The UserId is a unique identifier assigned to each user to distinguish him from other
users registered.
Figure 3: tblAirways
The tblAirways stored the information about the airways in our current FRC. Airway_cd
stored the airline code and AirWayName stored the name of the provider.
Figure 4: tblAirport
tblAirport had 3 fields that store information about all the airports, that include the airport
code, airport name and the city of the airport. The Unique identifier Airport_Cd the syste
distinguish between the respective airports.
Figure 5: tblFlightCodes
The FRC has multiple flights with the same Flight number, but at the different times of
the day. Hence flights are distinguished using the unique identifier Code_Id. The table
tblFlightCodes stores the flight number, the source and destination of the flight, the day
of the week on which the flight runs between the respective airports and the departure
time.
Figure 6: tblduration
This table has been used to generate the tblFlightDetails along with the above mentioned
tables. It has the source, destination, airway and the time it takes to travel between those
two airports for the respective airways.
Figure 7: tblitinerary
The table tblitinerary keeps a record of all the purchases made in the FRC. It stores the
id of the user who made the purchase, the purchase date and the itinerary selected. This
table is joined with the tblFlightDetails table, while displaying the purchase history of the
user and is updated every time a purchase is made.
Figure 8: tblFlightDetails
This table is the one that holds all the pre-determined itineraries in the FRC. It stores all
the information necessary for each and every itinerary.
Figure 9: tblTempPrefData
This table is similar to the tblItinerary, except for it stores the data directly for use in the
tblPreferences. It is used for analyzing the correctness of the selections made and the
preferences stored.
Figure 10: tblPreferences
Table tblPreferences is the key table in the entire FRC that stores the information used in
the recommendation system. The respective weight for each preference is stored in this
table. The individual weights of the attributes are accessed and used while sorting the
result set for recommendation purposes.
Figure 11: tblToTempResults
The table tblToTempResults is dynamically filled on the fly, when a search is performed.
It stores the search results for the onward journey until the purchase session is finished.
The data is cleared once a purchase is confirmed.
Figure 12: tblFroTempResults
This table is similar to tblToTempResults, except for it holds the information for the
return journey.
Figure 6 – DATABASE SCHEMA
tblFlightDetails
tblAirways
PK
PK
tblUserType
AirWayName
FK4
FK1
tblAirport
PK
Airport_Cd
Airport_Name
Airport_City
tblFlightCodes
PK
FK1
FK2
FK3
FK2
Code_Id
Flight_No
From_Airport_Cd
To_Airport_Cd
Day_Of_Week
Airway_Cd
From_Hr
From_Min
tblDuration
Pref_Id
User_Id
To_Price
From_Price
To_Airway
From_Airway
Duration
tohasStopOver
frohasStopOver
toTimeOfDay
froTimeOfDay
PK
Duration_Id
FK1
FK2
FK3
Duration_Hr
Duration_Min
Duration
From_Airport_Cd
To_Airport_Cd
Airway_Cd
PK
Flight_No
Airway_Cd
Day_Of_Week
From_Airport_Cd
From_Hr
From_Min
From_Time
So_To_Hr
So_To_Min
So_To_Time
So_Airport_Cd
So_From_Hr
So_From_Min
So_From_Time
To_Hr
To_Min
To_Time
To_Airport_Cd
So_To_Day
So_From_Day
To_Day
hasStopOver
From_So_Fair
So_To_Fair
From_To_Fair
So_Flight_No
PK
User_Id
To_Flight_Id
Fro_Flight_Id
To_Airway_Cd
To_hasStopOver
To_Fare
Fro_Airway_Cd
Fro_hasStopOver
Fro_Fare
To_Avg_Fare
Fro_Avg_Fare
Total_Avg_Tripfare
to_Id
To_Flight_Id
To_Flight_No
To_Airway_Cd
To_hasStopOver
To_From_To_Fair
To_Depart_Airport
To_Depart_Time
To_Stopover_Arrv_Time
To_Stopover_Airport
To_Stopover_Flight_No
To_Stopover_Depart_Time
To_Arrive_Time
To_Arrive_Airport
To_Fair
Total_Sort_Param
Price_Param
Airway_Param
TimeOfDay_Param
Stopover_Param
tblFroTempResults
PK
Fro_Id
Fro_Flight_Id
Fro_Flight_No
Fro_Airway_Cd
Fro_hasStopOver
Fro_From_To_Fair
Fro_Depart_Airport
Fro_Depart_Time
Fro_Stopover_Arrv_Time
Fro_Stopover_Airport
Fro_Stopover_Flight_No
Fro_Stopover_Depart_Time
Fro_Arrive_Time
Fro_Arrive_Airport
Fro_Fair
Total_Sort_Param
Price_Param
Airway_Param
TimeOfDay_Param
Stopover_Param
UserTypeId
UserType
tblUser
PK
Pref_Id
tblToTempResults
PK
FK3
tblTempPrefData
tblPreferences
PK
Flight_Id
AirWay_Cd
tblItenary
PK
Itenary_Id
FK3
FK1
FK2
User_Id
To_Flight_Id
Fro_Flight_Id
Book_Date
Child_Number
Adult_Number
ClassType
UserId
UserName
Password
LastName
FirstName
UserTypeId
There are 6 stored procedures in the database. The names of the procedures are selfexplanatory.
spGetSearchResults: This Procedure does the key job of fetching the results from the
tblFlightDetails. The user input is stored in a hash table and sent as a parameter. It returns
the set the itineraries that meet the criterion.
spGetPurchases: This procedure joins the tblItinerary with the tblFlightDetails and
returns the purchase history.
The stored procedures spGetUser, spInsertItenary, spInsertTempPref, spInsertUser does
the job of fetching the user information, inserting the purchase record, inserting the
preferences made and inserting a new user respectively.
There are 3 functions fnConvertArriveTimeToChar, fnGetArriveTime, fnGetNextDate in
the database that does the job of formatting and calculating the date and time.
3.4 MODULES
The modules involved in this application are:
3.4.1
a. Search for flights:
This is the module that involves the loading of Search page. The dropdown lists are
loaded with the airport names by accessing the tblAirport.
The user can click on the login or Signup and is redirected to the Login page or Register
page respectively. The user logs in, and the values are validated by testing against the
tblUser from the database. If the username and password combination are correct, the
user id redirected to the Search page and the logoff link is made visible.
The user goes to register page by clicking on signup from the Search page or the Login
page. The values entered are validated for correctness. Upon successful sign up, the user
is redirected to the search page. The new user is added to the tblUser table in the database
along with the information provided.
The user input is read from the search page. Required field validation is done to make
sure that the required input is entered. Data validation is done on the input to make sure
that the values entered meet the custom validation criterion. This includes, checking to
see, if the source and destination airports are the same. An alert is popped up to advising
the user to select different source and destination airports. This is done using JavaScript.
Similarly, Data-time validation is done in the calendar control. This assures that the data
selected is not before the current date. And for a roundtrip, it makes sure that the return
journey date is not before the onward journey date.
Once the validations are done, the search functionality is handled.
b. Get the results:
This is the heart of the entire project where the results are sorted based on the
recommendations and displayed. The user clicks the Search button and the input is read.
The input is stored in a hash table and sent to the stored procedure “spGetSearchResults”
for processing. The results are fetched and stored to the tables, tblToTempResults and
tblFroTempResults for onward and return flights respectively. The contents of the tables
are processed and sorted based on the Preferences from the tblPreferences. The data is
then displayed in the Results page. The results are displayed in descending order of
recommendation level for the particular user. The flights can be further sorted based on
the user price and airline fields. The onward and return flights are selected by clicking on
the respective radio button for that itinerary.
c. Login/Confirm:
The user selects the itineraries and confirms them by clicking on the Select button in the
Results page. This module checks is the user is logged in and takes the necessary action.
1. If the user is logged in, he is directed to display itinerary / confirm page, where the
user confirms the selected itinerary.
2. If the user is not logged in, he will be directed to the login page, from where, upon
successful login, is directed to the confirm page.
3. If the user is not logged in and is a new user, he can register from the link to the
signup page on the login page. On successful signup, he is directed to confirm
page.
The session is maintained through the whole process and on successful confirmation of
the Itinerary; the user is taken to the search page. The preferences and the itinerary are
updated in the user profile and the temporary result set is cleared.
d. View Purchase History:
The purchase history link appears when the user is logged in. This takes the user id and
fetched the purchase history by joining the tblitinerary with the tblFlightDetails. The
results are stored in a dataset and bound to the datagrid on the PurchaseHistory page.
3.5 FLOW CONTROL
3.5.1 USER FLOW CONTROL
The figure 7 shows the user control flow in the FRC. The rectangle boxes represent the
source files which are .aspx pages in my project. The arrows represent the flow between
the .aspx pages. The user starts from the home page which is the Search.aspx. At this
point he can make three choices whether to go to Login, Signup or the Results page. If
the user goes to Login page or the signup page, he is directed to the search page upon
successful login or signup. After the user signs in, his session is maintained and he can
view his purchase history. The results page can be reached, whether the user is signed in
or not.
From the Flow control diagram below, the user navigates to the confirm page, any time a
selection is made in the results page and the select button is clicked. This could be in
three ways
1. directly from the results page, if the user is already logged in.
2. through the login page, if the user already has an account to login with.
3. from results to login and then through signup, if it’s a new user.
The user can only navigate to the search page (home page) from the confirm page
The User flow control diagram had been designed in Microsoft Visio 2007.
Figure 1 – USER FLOW CONTROL
Login Page
Login.aspx
Onclick_Login
Onclick_Login
Confirm Page
DisplayIninerary.aspx
Onclick_Confirm
Home Page
Search.aspx
Onclick_search
Results Page
Results.aspx
Onclick_PurchaseHistory
Onclick_Signup
View
Purchase
History Page
Onclick_AcceptandContinue
Sign Up Page
Register.aspx
Onclick_Select
3.6 DESIGN
USE CASE DIAGRAMS:
The use case diagrams overview the usage requirements for a system. But in actual
development use cases provide significantly more value because they describe "the meat"
of the actual requirements. The use cases describe the sequence of actions that provide
something of measurable value to an actor.
Figure 8 – USER SIDE USE CASE DIAGRAM
ACTIVITY DIAGRAMS:
Activity diagrams are typically used for business process modeling, for modeling the
logic captured by a single use case or usage scenario, or for modeling the detailed logic
of a business rule. Activity diagram represents the business and operational step-by-step
workflows of components in a system. It shows the overall flow of control. In many ways
UML activity diagrams are the object-oriented equivalent of flow charts and data flow
diagrams from structured development. A very common use of activity diagrams is they
enable you to depict both the basic course of action as well as the alternate courses.
CLASS DIAGRAM:
Class diagrams show the classes of the system, their interrelationships and the operations
and attributes of the classes. The purpose of a class diagram is to depict the classes within
a model. In an object oriented application, classes have attributes (member variables),
operations (member functions) and relationships with other classes. The UML class
diagram can depict all these things quite easily.
SEQUENCE DIAGRAM:
Sequence diagrams model the flow of logic within the system in a visual manner,
enabling us both to document and validate your logic, and are commonly used for both
analysis and design purposes. Sequence diagrams are the most popular UML artifact for
dynamic modeling, which focuses on identifying the behavior within the system.
USER SEQUENCE DIAGRAM
4. TESTING
4.1 ANTS LOAD
1.
Testing using ANTS Load:
ANTS Load is used to predict a web application's behavior and performance under the
stress of a multiple user load. It does this by simulating multiple clients accessing a web
application at the same time, and measuring what happens. ANTS Load is for load testing
websites and web services and works particularly well for applications written using
Microsoft technologies such as ASP.NET and ASP.
Features:
It is used to build web applications using Microsoft technologies. It can quantify
performance for a reasonable (>25) number of application users. It can understand the
business impact of performance. It allows simulates multiple concurrent users of a web
application. It measures the performance of the application in terms of page download
times, server performance and errors. Finally it indicates the business impact in terms of
the abandonment prediction and frustration coefficient
ANTS Load has 3 editions:

ANTS Load Entry Level Edition lets you simulate up to 25 concurrent users,
running on a single client computer.

ANTS Load Professional Edition lets you simulate up to 100 concurrent users,
running on a single client computer.

ANTS Load Enterprise Edition lets you simulate thousands, or even tens of
thousands, of concurrent users, running on multiple client computers.
I have used the free evaluation for up to 10 users here for testing my web site.
4.2 ANAYLSIS
Website performance testing tools give results that are very subjective to interpret.
Ita been widely quoted that "if a web page takes longer than 10 seconds to download
then a user is likely to lose interest”. Frustration was measured as being very slightly
influenced by time but only if the download time was greater than 30 seconds.
Lostness equals the number of page visits required to complete a task (optimal path)
divided by the number of pages visited. 1.0 means the user was not lost at all. There is
no upper limit! You can see in the below test result that the time to connect to each
page was zero except for two pages. This shows that the web site will not be much
frustrating to users. The page
http://isis.oznet.ksu.edu/FCS/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=3 takes the maximum
amount of time to connect because of the authentication, the images it has to load and
the data it has to retrieve. Generally a web page consisting of images take a lot of
bytes and lot of time to connect and in this application the time to connect is not too
high. I have done the testing from a system connected to internet via modem and
hence I can say that it would perform even better from a faster connection.
Figure 2 – RESULTS
This section shows the overall distribution of metrics for the FRC. The charts show what
proportion of timings fall into which intervals.
Figure 3 – TIME TO CONNECT
This section shows you the average timings for each web page for this test. This can be
used to find the fastest, and slowest, pages in the current web application.
FRC
The figure 25 shows that the all the web requests take time that’s less than 50
milliseconds. This emphasis on the user’s frustration level is evident that it would be low
for the current application.
Figure 4 – TIME TO GET FIRST BYTE
The figure 26 shows the time taken for the application to get the first byte. We can see
that time taken to receive the first byte is less for the majority. Moreover, the maximum
time taken was just 250 milliseconds.
Figure 5 – TIME TO GET LAST BYTE
The figure 27 shows the time taken for the application to get the last byte. We can see
that the maximum time taken to receive the last byte was 250 milliseconds.
The figure 28 represents the total number of bytes received by each web request. The
complexity of the application is obvious from the vast amount of the web requests
receiving close to 5000-10000
bytes
4.2.1 RESULTS
From the above analysis, we can conclude that:

The FRC, despite being a very complex application with a lot of request to the
database, performs really well in terms as is evident from the graphs. We can be
assured that the application would minimize the user frustration level.

The time to connect to the web page is low and hence the web page will not be
abandoned by the users.

The time between the first byte and the last byte received is very nominal, We
can see from the figure 28 that despite the high amount of data received is the
time to receive the last byte is low. Thus we can conclude that the level of lost
ness while navigating through the application is very less.
5. FUTURE WORK
5.1 EXTENSIONS
The FRC application is limited to only a few user preferences. The number of preference
characteristic could be increased significantly. The case based reasoning works
effectively for the particular user in context. A recommendation system can be made
more effective by using a collaborative approach. An approach where the predictions are
specific to the user, but use information gleaned from many users. The FRC generalizes
the concept of multiple users by just calculating the total weight of individual preferences
instead of calculating the similarity between different users. The current system gathers
implicit feedback by observing the history of the user purchases. The scope of implicit
feedback gathered can be extended or improved by observing the user’s action in each
given sessions.
6. CONCLUSION
This report describes the Flight Reservation Client (FRC), an application that enables the
user search for and finds flights. The search result comprises a large number of
itineraries. Hence the recommendation system cuts down the burden on the user by
recommending the flight that best fit his preferences by placing them at the top. Explicit
feedback leads to an increase in the user’s frustration level. The recommendation process
is highly effective as it uses implicit feedback. The feedback is obtained by making some
observations on the user’s purchase history. The FRC makes successful recommendations
by using the technique of assigning feature weights and user specific context based
recommendations. The recommendation algorithm was designed with the Flight
Reservation client (FRC) application in mind. Yet, it can be applied to other domains that
use implicit feedback. The key to the success of the FRC is the ability to sort the results
based on user preferences and personalizing it in the recommendation process.
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