OHIP Introduces State-of-the-Art Streaming API and Rich Analytics

The repetitive questioning might be annoying, but it’s an effective way to illustrate the inefficiency of a “pull” approach for obtaining data. You constantly need to request if there are any updates. Until now, consuming OPERA Cloud business events via the Oracle Hospitality Integration Platform (OHIP) has only been possible through this approach.

Using the previous analogy, streaming API is a technology that enables “push” notifications, which means users of our APIs won’t have to constantly pull our API for events. Instead, this new “push” technology enables users of our streaming API to be notified automatically in real time whenever an event occurs in OPERA Cloud. For hoteliers, its benefits can be used in countless scenarios to enhance guest service and improve operations – from check-in and checkout to updating reservations to tracking housekeeping changes.

This new capability offers the following game changing features:

• Ultra-fast streaming technology for business events push: We’ve adopted the most flexible and robust technology available today to deliver a fast, scalable, and reliable solution. WebSocket enables the ultra-fast streaming of events. GraphQL Subscriptions allow customers and partners to “cherry pick” the data elements they want included in the events. This is leading-edge not just in hospitality but across all industries.
• Self-service experience, end to end, to subscribe on demand: OHIP users can subscribe to any business event against any OPERA Cloud property with streaming enabled.
• Templated event subscription: For easy and rapid configuration, event subscription templates can be created once and then applied to any environment with similar event subscriptions needs.
• Play back events up to a week old, always in the right order: Our kafka-based event backbone enables not only the delivery of events in the right order, but also the ability to play back events that are up to a week old. This innovative capability allows users to recover from all sorts of failures, including network problems, synchronization issues, and server failures.
• Resilient, reliable, and scalable cloud-native solution: The entire solution is based on Oracle Cloud Infrastruture (OCI) cloud-native services, making it highly secured and scalable.
• Playground and samples for speedy implementation: We’re making available a Graphiql based client along with many code samples to make it easy for our users to quickly get up to speed on this new capability.

The value of streaming API technology is evident, and that’s why its addition is the highlight of this latest OHIP release. The integration platform is all about simplifying integrations to bring innovations faster to market, which is essential for hoteliers striving to accelerate their recovery in post-pandemic times.

But that is not all. This newest OHIP release also features a new rich Analytics page in the developer portal designed to provide all users with comprehensive insights into the usage of REST APIs and the frequency with which they are being called.

• Get full insight over API calls through rich dashboard visualizations
• Determine the exact number of successful vs. unsuccessful calls with corresponding HTTP response codes
• Filtering options such as:
  • Time range
  • Environment
  • Applications
  • Specific APIs
  • Current and previous billing cycles

Launched in late 2020, OHIP allows partners and vendors to connect to OPERA Cloud property management system, giving them unimpeded access to the data within it for faster product development. OHIP represents a reinvention of Oracle’s integration model: It enables innovations that improve hotel operations and elevate guest experience and makes them available in matter of days and weeks, rather than months and years.

Perhaps, most importantly, Oracle has been committed to keeping OHIP in a perpetual state of evolution, adding new features and making enhancements to constantly accelerate the pace of innovation. In its first year alone, OHIP has undertaken:

• 7 production releases with zero downtime
• Offering unrestricted access to the largest number of API capabilities in the industry (more than 3,000)
• Processing about 30 million API calls per month in just over a year – and that volume is growing quickly
• Onboarding more than 200 partner vendors

In the past, technology partners often were dependent on Oracle for guidance before they could integrate with OPERA. But with OHIP, every integration is now a self-service experience. Users simply register for OHIP, and they can immediately take advantage of every capability on their own, without assistance, because of the platform’s intuitive design.

Oracle Hospitality brings over 40 years of experience in providing technology solutions to independent hoteliers, global and regional chains, gaming, and cruise lines. Our cloud-based, mobile-enabled solutions for property management, point-of-sale, distribution, and reporting and analytics lower IT costs and maximize business agility. Oracle Hospitality’s OPERA is recognized globally as the leading property management platform and offers open APIs to serve as a platform for industry innovation.