Transaction Retrieval
One of the problems in the administration of a lottery system has been difficulty in retrieving transaction history. Requests for ticket history for legal cases (fraud, retailer non-payment, criminal prosecutions, etc.) can often span a timeframe that is past the capacity of online storage. Ticket history searches require time-consuming database restores and searching for “slices” of the total period needed. These searches may also be requested from third-parties – where resources may already be stretched. The retrieval of information about sales, validations and cancellations of online tickets, and pack status and validations of instant tickets, has been manually intensive and time consuming. Until now.
Elsym Consulting, Inc. is pleased to present its new Transaction Retrieval System (TRS). Based on Microsoft web-based client-server technology, the TRS interface makes it easy to retrieve instant and online transaction history from any browser. There is no tape to handle, nor operations staff to call. Retrieval is simple, easy and is done in just minutes!
How do we do it?
Recent advances in Storage Technology allow us to store up 20 Terabytes worth of transactional history on a RAID 0 (fully duplicated) data warehouse system. This enables even the largest lottery systems to store up to 10 years of transactional data in the TRS data warehouse.
If you have Elsym’s Internal Control System, maintenance is even easier! Each day, transactions are transferred to the TRS for inclusion in future queries, and the TRS ensures that new modifications and games are handled properly!
How does it work?
To retrieve transactions, criteria are entered into an internet browser form and the request is submitted to the History Server. All transaction history is scanned and the results are displayed back to the requester. The data can then be stored as a report, printed, or exported into an Excel spreadsheet. Requests for transactions can take from a few seconds up to 20 minutes depending on the data requested. Multiple queries can be submitted and processed by the Intel Quad core Server Technology.
What can you ask for?
Ticket History – You have an instant ticket that you want to track in order to see its history. Just scan in with the attached scanner. If there are duplicates (example two game # 1’s), a screen will pop up asking which one you want. History will then be scanned showing the pack activity from entrance into the warehouse through settlement, as well as any activity for that ticket, all in one report.
Security History – If security has found that a store clerk is fraudulently cancelling or cashing tickets after customers leave the store, security can make a request for cancelled tickets for certain hours over a number of weeks. This report would then be used for the impending court case.
Recent History – If a retailer calls saying that a ticket did not print and is asking if the ticket was recorded, a query can be made showing the recent history of that retailer’s activity. Information can immediately be adjusted for that retailer – allowing quick and effective resolution of any financial problems.
What about converting the previous history?
Because of Elsym’s reputation as the leader in Internal Control Systems, we have been given permission to view complete and detailed knowledge of your online and instant data. As long as you have a tape backup of the day’s transactions and the vendor has maintained an infrastructure layout of the recorded transactions, that information can be loaded into the TRS data warehouse.
Elsym - We create certainty.