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AWS Solutions Library

Guidance for Near Real-Time Airport Gate Change Information on AWS

Overview

This Guidance helps airlines and airports provide updates about flight information to passengers in near real time. Sometimes, information displayed on airline applications may differ from flight information display screens in airport terminals. This architecture uses Amazon EventBridge or Kafka to share data from legacy technology systems, such as an airport operational database (AODB), and give passengers consistent and reliable flight updates. Airports and airlines can improve the travel experience through advanced ML-powered analytics and voice, chat, and mobile interactions with passengers. 

How it works

These technical details feature an architecture diagram to illustrate how to effectively use this solution. The architecture diagram shows the key components and their interactions, providing an overview of the architecture's structure and functionality step-by-step.

Download the architecture diagram

Well-Architected Pillars

The architecture diagram above is an example of a Solution created with Well-Architected best practices in mind. To be fully Well-Architected, you should follow as many Well-Architected best practices as possible.

You can deploy this architecture using AWS CloudFormation, which uses repeatable templates and represents the architecture stack in code. You can also use Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray to gain visibility into what is happening across your system.

Read the Operational Excellence whitepaper 

AWS DMS connects as a user on the database to capture changes. Amazon MSK supports a native integration with Lambda. Lambda uses an execution role to access Amazon MSK. EventBridge uses AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies to permit cross-account access. External parties accessing Amazon MSK directly can use IP restrictions and certificates.

Read the Security whitepaper 

Consider deploying AWS DMS with a multi-Availability Zone configuration to ensure that changes are captured, even in the event of an outage. Additionally, you should familiarize yourself with Lambda concurrency limits in the Region you plan to run this system and set CloudWatch alarms to monitor resources. Lambda is used for stateless compute, which processes received messages. If Lambda fails to process messages from Amazon MSK, it will retry. EventBridge allows for messages to be replayed, retried, and delivered to multiple destinations.

Read the Reliability whitepaper 

We included Kafka in this Guidance to provide an interface for data consumers that aren’t built on AWS, meaning they are unable to integrate with EventBridge natively. For airlines that do have a serverless-first application on AWS, we chose EventBridge to quickly respond to changes in airport infrastructure. We chose AWS DMS as a managed service to stream changes from the source database and Lambda as a cost-effective serverless compute layer for processing events. 

Read the Performance Efficiency whitepaper 

Services such as Lambda and EventBridge allow customers to pay only for the resources they consume. For services such as AWS DMS and Amazon MSK, it is important that you regularly review your resource sizing to ensure cost effectiveness. 

Read the Cost Optimization whitepaper 

This architecture uses a serverless-first approach, through services such as Lambda and EventBridge. Lambda can be configured to use ARM processors for more sustainable compute.

Read the Sustainability whitepaper 

Disclaimer

The sample code; software libraries; command line tools; proofs of concept; templates; or other related technology (including any of the foregoing that are provided by our personnel) is provided to you as AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement, or the relevant written agreement between you and AWS (whichever applies). You should not use this AWS Content in your production accounts, or on production or other critical data. You are responsible for testing, securing, and optimizing the AWS Content, such as sample code, as appropriate for production grade use based on your specific quality control practices and standards. Deploying AWS Content may incur AWS charges for creating or using AWS chargeable resources, such as running Amazon EC2 instances or using Amazon S3 storage.

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