Indian railways "The most complicated network"

Every Indian would have fallen prey to the savage beast of our government IT department CRIS.The beast that no one but only CRIS could tame.The beast that would bring frustration to the occasional web user.The beast that forbids the weak heart from doing online transactions.The beast that does things according to its will, leaving the IT guys scratching their buts.

The beast is none other than our very own site irctc.co.in.

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The deadly combination

The best and the greatest feat by the Indian government to bring the once old manual railway reservation system to the 20th century. The site boasts more transactions than any other Indian website. The Site that runs on the best WebServer (According to IRCTC) BroadVision (A J2EE compliant server written in C++ -- sweeet). I wounder why IBM or Oracle did not come into the mind of CRIS for their industry standard Application server?.Anyway,let me go through the details of the site

The site uses WEB 2.0 technologies -- yes -- and its for real -- They use AJAX for for some of the requests.They use a mix of CGI java,.net and even PERL??(I have seen these in a job requirement some 5 years ago for IRCTC) never mind.

And I think the best thing about this site is its ability to handle multiple transactions.Only 1 out of 5 transactions will be successful which make the success rate to book a ticket on this site to 20%. But do make note that if the ticket is not booked they will refund the money with 5 to 6 days just charging a minimal amount of 11 rupees for the refund process(Means even if it is the mistake of IRCTC you have to pay for the same-- nice logic)(Or may be Indian govt is making a lot of money with these 11 rupees - only god knows).

Why Indian Banks chose major IT companies for their software rather than have their in-house departments?.

Because they have already seen the efficiency of IRCTC.

You will have many advantages having an In-house IT department,in a normal working environment.But in Railways even if you are from Stanford or MIT you should have some type of reservation to get through it.So a whole bunch of non IT people with non IT education will be the developers of the not so nice IRCTC website.

Example

IRCTC Recruitment 2010

Assistant Manager for IT:

• Age Limit: 35 years
• Number of vacancies: 04 (Gen- 3, OBC-1)
• Salary: Rs. 20600- 3% -46500 (IDA) (E2)

Qualification:

1. Regular BE or B.Tech or Masters in Computer Science or Application, recognized by UGC or AICTE.
2. 5 years post qualification experience in Java based Application. Designing Software development extensive using VB, ASP, Java, JSP, .Net, DZK, SQL or Oracle 9i/10g, DBA, WINNT/Linux with Hardware and Networking knowledge.

WTF anyone who is maintaining a Java application needs .net and VB?? only god knows!.So may be he should be a master of all technologies in the world ,just in case if required and don't forget the reservation! :)

I feel IRCTC might be using a Pentium 1 CPU with a massive RAM of 32 MB,They might not have upgraded the system since old ages.Or may be they just forgot where the production server is physically present!!!.

And to add to the insult they are charging 20 rs for every transaction,why not for free! the site is built with taxpayers money.

Even with all these drawbacks I am happy to see that there is at least an online website where I can book my tickets.See the people in Africa or the Amazon forests, they don't get to book their tickets online,Ahhha! we are in the 20th century competing with the developed countries.

Using this site is far better than standing in the line, talking to an ill tempered ,ill educated computer illiterate looking through the black and white screen in amazement and taking 5 to 10 min to book a ticket. Further the concept of onward journey is alien to many of the staff in the booking counter.May be they think that they are doing the most complicated stuff in the universe(May be!, using a govt site is no less complicated than, launching a satellite into orbit).

But all in all , if you feel you don't mind spending 30 extra bucks use cleartrip.com,A private site which uses IRCTC services and 100 faster than IRCTC.co.in.I don't know what might be the difference ,may be the blazing fast servers or the facking developers in CRIS.

Finally I think IRCTC server should be shoved into our railway minsters ass, just to remind her how this site, was a pain in the ass for majority of the Indian public.

I am quiet optimistic that the bridge at hitech city would be completed by the end of 2010.

The above sentence may a bit over kill but I see 4 workers continuously working from the past 2 years on the bridge. Its really a wonder made possible by our HMDA.Its optimization of resources to the maximum extend and as TIME has no value in the books of the Government this is the best we can expect.

If the Taj Mahal needs to be built now and if the task is given to HMDA then with the 4 efficient workforce it will take 10,500 years to build the monument(it took 20 thousand skilled workers 21 years to construct the entire tomb).

By the way HMDA means Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority and to its credit it is the worst functioning body in south india.

Still in Au-2012 the saga continues.People working 24/7 working in dim lights aided with lights from the the heavy traffic.Workers work with their bare hands to set up the structures ignorant of the technology advancements in the modern world.