The UltraDirect Availability Cache functionality allows rate and availability information for properties to be retrieved in the EST response. Cached single-property availability responses can be utilized by UltraDirect to generate multi-property availability responses, and vice versa.
The RequestedAccuracy attribute within the Route element in the message header specifies whether the cache should be used. Affiliates can indicate their preference for responses to be sourced either from the cache or directly from the source (e.g., the hotel’s CRS).
In the example below, the affiliate specifies that responses can be retrieved from either the cache or the source:
The response message specifies, for each property, whether the information was retrieved from the cache or directly from the source. It also provides the "age" of the response by including a timestamp indicating when the response was created.
If the information was returned from the cache, the age corresponds to the timestamp of when the response was initially added to the cache.
If the information was sourced directly, the timestamp reflects when the response was generated in real-time.
Note:
As a general practice, for EST API transactions, “CacheOrSource” is used.
If the requested accuracy is not available for a requested property then the Property element is returned with AvailabilityStatus set to “Unknown”. For example, if the previous request message was changed so that RequestedAccuracy=”CacheOnly” and there is no matching transaction in the cache for property UI;54321 then the response would be as follows:
