Platform Evolution
Assessment run-2026-07-27-1 · 213 of 213 repos assessed
Repos / phenix-passenger-service

phenix-passenger-service

Legacy ASMX/SOAP web service providing passenger-entry operations for Phenix (passengers, passports, emergency contacts, addresses, customers, portal-user checks) by aggregating many other estate services.

54 · amberhighkernelOn-premZDD: needs workservice

Health score

54

0 to 100 across seven weighted factors; nothing is hidden. Green is 75 and above, amber 50 to 74, red below 50. How scoring works.


Runtime currency / 25
0
.NET Framework, out of mainstream support
Legacy transport / 15
6
Calls at least one legacy WCF endpoint
Test posture / 15
8
Some tests, coverage is thin
Security hygiene / 15
15
No credentials found in source
Dangerous coupling / 15
11
depends on pinning component(s): application-framework
Activity / 10
10
Actively maintained
Deployment hygiene / 5
5
CI in place
Health over time
2026-07-24 (run-2026-07-24-1): 542026-07-27 (run-2026-07-27-1): 54
No change since 2026-07-24 (54 to 54).

Facts

Languagescsharp
FrameworksASP.NET Web Services (ASMX), Ninject
Runtimes.NET Framework 4.7.2
Tests / CIsome / CI in place
Last commit2026-02-25
OwnerOwner unknown (mapping to be curated)
DomainSelling and quoting (system generated; curate in repo-owners.json to override)
Product areaPhenix
HostedOn-prem Deployed to our own machines
  • Release "\marketing\phenix-passenger-service": QA: deployment-group phase (agents on our own machines)
  • Release "\marketing\phenix-passenger-service": Staging: deployment-group phase (agents on our own machines)
  • Release "\marketing\phenix-passenger-service": Production: deployment-group phase (agents on our own machines)
  • Release "\marketing\phenix-passenger-service": Training: deployment-group phase (agents on our own machines)
  • Release "\marketing\phenix-passenger-service": DR: deployment-group phase (agents on our own machines)
Releases2 release pipeline(s): \marketing\phenix-passenger-service; \marketing\phenix-passenger-service Stealth
Integrationsoap, wcf, rest
SourceOpen in Azure DevOps

Risk flags

Each flag links to its glossary definition.

Dependencies in context

Laying out the graph…
greenamberreddata store (square, dashed link)Node size follows fan-in. Click any node to open it.

Entanglement

kernel Bound into the core by 2 mechanism(s).

Detaches when its pinning dependencies are cut or multi-targeted (application-framework); and when its WCF surface gains a modern interface or its WCF calls move to one.

Migration playbooks

Generated from this repo's assessment data: what is feasible, what blocks it, and the steps in order. Ratings: green means actionable now, amber means sequence other work first, red means blocked, grey means not applicable.

ZDD adoption

Needs work

Feasible through the Workflow Engine's rolling drain, but real preparation is needed: dual-version discipline, better tests, or schema care before at-will release is sensible. Legacy runtime: the rolling drain works (stealth releases prove it) but relies on fix-forward risk rather than dual-version safety.

Dependencies and gotchas
  • Consumes WCF contract packages: never take a breaking client bump mid-feature, and treat obsolete warnings as migration debt
Steps
  1. Adopt the four-stage discipline from the ZDD engineering standard: pre-deployment compatibility, deployment, feature activation behind a flag, post-release cleanup.
  2. Raise automated test coverage first: ZDD trades the end-of-sprint manual gate for continuous automated confidence, so the tests are the entry ticket.
  3. Make every change dual-version safe: backwards-compatible APIs (new major version for breaking wire changes), expand and contract for any schema change, and consumers tolerant of unknown fields.
  4. Audit serialized data: anything in Redis, queues or shared caches must deserialize cleanly across adjacent versions.
  5. Wrap behaviour changes in feature flags so code deploys dark and release becomes a business decision, not a deployment event.
  6. Route deployments through the Workflow Engine's automated drain, deploy, health-check, return cycle (the path proven by the first automated production run in mid-2026).
  7. Verify with area-scoped regression rather than the whole-platform cycle, and watch error rates after rollout with automated rollback on alert.

SQL Server exit

Blocked by a shared database

sqlserver:DirectStockAccommodationContract is shared, so this system cannot change engine on its own: every sharer moves in convoy. Either agree the move with all sharers as one programme, or first split this system's data out behind an owned API, then follow the steps below.

Blockers
Steps
  1. Inventory the schema and query surface of sqlserver:DirectStockAccommodationContract: tables, stored procedures, triggers, cross-database joins and anything else engine-specific.
  2. Confirm the target: PostgreSQL (relational model; keep transactions and joins, swap the engine).
  3. Replatform to modern .NET first (see the recommended actions): current PostgreSQL and MongoDB drivers and EF Core providers target modern .NET, and doing one risky change at a time is cheaper than doing two.
  4. Data access is not through an ORM, so port the SQL by hand: translate T-SQL constructs, replace stored procedures with application code or target-native equivalents, and add integration tests around the queries that matter first.
  5. Stand up the target alongside SQL Server, backfill with an ETL pass (pgloader or an export/import job), then dual-write or replicate until parity is proven.
  6. Move reads to the target, watch correctness and latency, then cut writes over and keep SQL Server read-only until confidence is earned.
  7. Decommission the SQL Server database and remove the connection strings and firewall paths that pointed at it.

Containerisation

Feasible after replatforming

Appropriate, but the .NET Framework runtime has to go first; container work rides along with the replatform rather than preceding it.

Blockers
  • .NET Framework only runs on Windows; practical (Linux) containers need modern .NET
Steps
  1. Replatform to modern .NET first (see the recommended actions). Containerising then becomes routine.
  2. Add a Dockerfile and make the app read all configuration from environment variables and the secrets manager, never from machine-local files.
  3. Log to stdout and expose a health check endpoint so ECS can supervise it.
  4. Adopt the shared ci.yml pipeline template with the container parameters (awsRegion, containerAfterBuild, ecsTerraformRepo), which is exactly how the estate's existing AWS services deploy.
  5. Define the service in the Terraform repo, deploy to a non-production environment, then shift traffic and disarm the deployment-group release pipeline.

Recommended actions

Replatform phenix-passenger-service to modern .NET

Runs on .NET Framework 4.7.2, out of mainstream support. Blocked until stage 2 cuts: application-framework.

Impact: Reduces the end-of-life runtime count

proposed

Assessment notes

phenix-passenger-service

Purpose

PassengerEntryService.asmx — a single SOAP web service with ~20 [WebMethod]s that back Phenix passenger entry: reading/writing passengers, passports, emergency contacts, telephones, emails and addresses, business-customer lookups, country data, credit checks and customer-portal-enabled checks. It is essentially an aggregation facade over half a dozen other estate services, with JSON DTO types serialised inside SOAP responses.

Tech stack

C# .NET Framework 4.7.2 classic web-application csproj (with modern PackageReference grafted in), ASMX web service base-classed on Ninject.Web.WebServiceBase, Polly, StackExchange.Redis and the full TC.Cache stack (configured to memory storage in Web.config), XDT config transforms for eight environments. README notes it is "best run with Visual Studio 2017+"; the solution dir setting still points into a PhenixRetail folder, betraying its origin.

Deployment

prod_application with 2 releases via build pipeline phenix-passenger-service (YAML, InternalOSS templates v1.0 using the Visual Studio build job with SDK 8.x tooling) and release pipelines \marketing\phenix-passenger-service and ... Stealth. IIS-hosted under the Phenix site.

Dependencies

Internal: tc-connectionbroker (Sql/Redis/Api/Wcf), tc-exceptions, application-framework (TC.Phenix.ApplicationFramework), phenix-contact-centre-wcf (ContactCentreSoap client), phenix-contact-centre-2-api (internal HTTP client), backoffice (Booking and Repository WCF service references via TC.Phenix.Services.Client), backoffice-address-lookup-service, backoffice-bt-credit-check (credit-check web API client), backoffice-useraccount-service. Also consumes TC.Phenix.Customer/Country/User and TC.CustomerPortalUsers.ServiceContracts packages.

Data stores

One direct SQL Server access: raw SqlConnection against the DirectStockAccommodationContract connection (direct-stock accommodation data). All other data is fetched via downstream services. Cache storage is in-process memory despite the Redis packages.

Integration points

Inbound SOAP (ASMX, BasicProfile 1.1, also [ScriptService] for JSON GET/POST). Outbound: SOAP to the contact-centre service, WCF to booking/repository/address-lookup/user-account services, REST to contact-centre-2 and credit-check APIs.

Code health

Effectively untested — the single test file is a CanCreateService smoke test. Actively changed (last commit 2026-02-25), so a legacy SOAP facade is still accreting behaviour. Mixed-era project file with .bak files checked in.

Modernisation risks

High priority: a production-critical, actively-developed ASMX service on .NET Framework 4.7.2 with fan-out to at least six other services and near-zero tests. ASMX has no migration path to modern .NET at all (worse than WCF/CoreWCF), so its operations need re-homing behind REST — likely alongside the passenger-configuration WCF pair, which covers the same domain.