Case Studies
Accelerating One of the Most Sophisticated Automated Railway Scheduling Systems in Europe
Overview
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Middleware, SDKs & Libraries Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms | |
Transportation | |
Business Operation Logistics & Transportation | |
Fleet Management Predictive Maintenance Real-Time Location System (RTLS) Remote Asset Management | |
Software Design & Engineering Services System Integration | |
Operational Impact
Hazelcast dramatically sped up the data access, which increased overall system performance. Hazelcast optimizations like near-cache, in which certain data can be copied to local nodes to further improve speed by removing unnecessary network hops, helped to achieve faster performance. | |
The generated dashboard lets planners see various situations such as the cause of a blockage of a train waiting at a given station. They get much faster feedback, so they can see what is happening immediately, instead of having to wait several minutes for an update. As a result of all their work, they feel like their effort for automated timetables is possibly the most ambitious in all of Europe. | |
There were some lessons learned when incorporating Hazelcast into their infrastructure. Most notably, the cache eviction strategy needed some more attention early on, as they learned they had to get a better understanding of the details to get it right, or else they would get memory-related errors. In some instances they kept adding data to Hazelcast without releasing older data, resulting in unexpected errors. Fortunately, they felt the documentation was good, so they were able to figure out most issues on their own via the documentation. Once they learned how to optimally use Hazelcast, the ongoing effort became easier. | |
Quantitative Benefit
SBB runs about 3000 passenger/commercial trains each day. | |
In the 2017 European Railway Performance index, SBB was rated first among national European railways. | |