"As e-commece technology and business models mature, many
companies are re-examining the tools they initially used to open
their virtual storefronts. One such e-firm is the travel mogul
Orbitz, which recently made a major migration to Linux
systems...
"For example, if a customer has $200 to spend and wants to know
where they can go for the weekend, the Orbitz system might search
for fares across several different weekends, as well as many
different destinations. Couple that with having to search through
all the various flight times, stopovers, connections, etc. and one
can see how powerful the search engines needed to be.
"A search could generate 2 billion fare and flight combinations
at a time. A new feature, FlexSearch, allows 42 different date
combinations cross-matched with hundreds of different fares.
"So how did Orbitz handle this monumental task? Initially, with
Sun. Now, however, Linux servers are carrying much of the
load..."
