Limit on number of tickets purchased?

[SNJRider]

I'm having issues with Amtrak displaying all of my trips (app and website). I was wondering if it was due to the amount of tickets I have purchased (80+) going out 11 months.

 

[bratkinson]

The 'limit' you are likely encountering is a limitation of the Amtrak software.

Back when I was writing programs for clients for a living, in one payroll system I created and implemented for a client I had allowed for 30 character employee names in the master file. Looking at the phone book, I didn't see any names that I thought would be more than 30 characters long. I was wrong. They had an employee from India or somewhere whose full name was 38 characters long! He couldn't cash his check as the program simply truncated his name!

Put another way, why build houses with 4 car garages on the possibility some family may have that many?

Having a computer 'array' or 'table' to hold each of a passengers' reservation is naturally limited to some 'reasonable' number of entries. Remember that the Amtrak reservation system was written (purchased) in the days of very expensive computers and storage. So every character of data 'saved' is very important. Why needlessly reserve space for 100 reservations for every customer? So, whoever designed the system probably started with 25 as a limit, but that grew through the years to maybe 75 or so. Resizing the database to handle more reservations per customer is a very expensive undertaking as every program that has any access to that data must be modified to expect expanded passenger records. If they miss even one of those programs, some level of problems will inevitably result.

The good news is that with relational database technology available today, there's practically no limit to the number of reservations (table entries) that can be stored for a customer. That's the good news.

The bad news is that it would take a complete redesign and rewrite of the Amtrak ticketing system to use the relational database. Got money? Got staff?

 

[Acela150]

I'm going to take a guess on this one.. It may possibly be to prevent you from showing the wrong ticket on the wrong train. This happens to me at least once a trip. Someone will have a ticket for the same train but on a different date.

 

[SNJRider]

The 'limit' you are likely encountering is a limitation of the Amtrak software.

Back when I was writing programs for clients for a living, in one payroll system I created and implemented for a client I had allowed for 30 character employee names in the master file. Looking at the phone book, I didn't see any names that I thought would be more than 30 characters long. I was wrong. They had an employee from India or somewhere whose full name was 38 characters long! He couldn't cash his check as the program simply truncated his name!

Put another way, why build houses with 4 car garages on the possibility some family may have that many?

Having a computer 'array' or 'table' to hold each of a passengers' reservation is naturally limited to some 'reasonable' number of entries. Remember that the Amtrak reservation system was written (purchased) in the days of very expensive computers and storage. So every character of data 'saved' is very important. Why needlessly reserve space for 100 reservations for every customer? So, whoever designed the system probably started with 25 as a limit, but that grew through the years to maybe 75 or so. Resizing the database to handle more reservations per customer is a very expensive undertaking as every program that has any access to that data must be modified to expect expanded passenger records. If they miss even one of those programs, some level of problems will inevitably result.

The good news is that with relational database technology available today, there's practically no limit to the number of reservations (table entries) that can be stored for a customer. That's the good news.

The bad news is that it would take a complete redesign and rewrite of the Amtrak ticketing system to use the relational database. Got money? Got staff?

Thank you for this detailed response and your relevant anecdotes. It might be the most "engineering" type answer I've seen and I think your assessment is accurate.
The app/website issue became apparent when some of my non-stop trips became connecting trips. So instead of one ticket, I now have two tickets for the same trip. That may have overloaded the capabilities of the system.
Thanks for sharing your input.