The Indian Railways reservation platform best exemplifies which type of information system based on its high-volume, routine, real-time recording of bookings, cancellations, and payments?

Introduction / Context:
Information systems are often classified by the nature of the work they support. A reservation platform handles repetitive, structured events—searches, bookings, cancellations, payments—at very high volumes with strict consistency and availability requirements. Such characteristics align with a Transaction Processing System (TPS).

Given Data / Assumptions:

• Millions of routine transactions processed daily.
• Real-time inventory updates, concurrency control, and reliability.
• Well-defined operations with limited need for complex analytics during the transaction itself.

Concept / Approach:
A TPS captures, validates, and stores transactions, ensuring ACID properties in database updates and providing auditability. It emphasizes throughput and correctness over exploratory analysis. Decision Support Systems (DSS) and Management Control Systems (MCS) analyze aggregated data or support semi-structured decisions, typically offline or interactively with managers. Expert systems encode domain rules for advisory output—this is not the main function of a reservation engine.

Step-by-Step Solution:
Identify core workload: structured, high-volume transactions with state changes.Map to system type: TPS.Exclude DSS/MCS/expert system as primary characterizations.

Verification / Alternative check:
Reservation logs feed downstream analytics and reporting, but the transactional layer remains a TPS by definition.

Why Other Options Are Wrong:
DSS: supports semi-structured decisions rather than high-volume booking transactions.MCS: focuses on planning and performance control, not real-time bookings.Expert system: rule-based advisory, not core booking workflows.None of the above: false because TPS fits exactly.

Common Pitfalls:
Confusing the transactional core with reporting/analytics layers; ignoring OLTP scaling concerns like locking, partitioning, and failover.

Final Answer:
Transaction processing system