lloyd’s register · lloyd’s register is a global engineering, technical and business services...

Customer Case Study

Copyright © 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Published May, 2014 Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/of its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. 1

LLOYD’S REGISTER

Lloyd’s Register Group Services Limited

United Kingdom

http://www.lr.org/sectors/marine/

Industry: Marine

Products & Services:

• Oracle ADF Mobile

• Oracle JDeveloper / Oracle ADF

• Oracle WebLogic Server

• Oracle DB

• Oracle Web Service Manager (OWSM)

• REST Web Services

• IBM Information Management System

• Microsoft LDAP

Project Scale:

• 2 Developers (1 ADF Mobile/ADF/DBA and 1 Data Warehouse)

• 10 weeks to develop

• 1 task flow

• 21 AMX pages

• 23 REST services

Credits:

Richard Childe, Lloyd’s Register Group Services Limited

Oracle Product Management

“Our first mobile application demonstrated that building a mobile application with Oracle ADF Mobile is straightforward, does not have to involve a vast army of developers, can easily leverage an existing Oracle infrastructure, and does not entail the spiraling development costs that sometimes occur when a small, mobile development company attempts to deal with your IT infrastructure.” – Richard Childe, Applications DBA and ADF Developer at Lloyd’s Register Group Services Limited

Executive Summary After successfully re-developing a number of public-facing web sites using Oracle ADF 11g, Lloyd’s Register (LR) decided to build an application that would allow their clients to access fleet data from their mobile devices. Oracle ADF Mobile made perfect sense, based on existing in-house Oracle ADF experience and a proof-of-concept application that proved to be a straightforward process. The marine management team responded with enthusiasm at the fact that one developer easily and securely exposed a simple piece of data from a database to both iOS and Android mobile devices.

Organization Lloyd’s Register is a global engineering, technical and business services organization wholly owned by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, a UK charity dedicated to research and education in science and engineering. Founded in 1760 as a marine classification society, LR now operates across many industry sectors, with over 9,000 employees in 78 countries. LR has a long-standing reputation for integrity, impartiality and technical excellence. Its compliance, risk and technical consultancy services give clients confidence that their assets and businesses are safe, sustainable and dependable. Through their global technology centres and research network, LR is at the forefront of understanding the application of new science and technology to future-proof their clients’ businesses. LR Marine provides a range of services to their customers including environmental services, marine training, classification, certification, and consulting. Class Direct is a free service for owners and managers of LR classed ships, providing secure access to a wealth of data about ships in a customer’s fleet. Class Direct was initially web-based only but with Oracle ADF Mobile, quickly provided their survey functionality on both iOS and Android devices to their customers (surveyors).

The Business Issue LR had been operating with a legacy IBM Mainframe running Information Management System (hierarchical database) and decided it was time to take advantage of newer / more modern channels of information delivery. Instead of scrapping the existing system, LR decided to extend it through modernization technologies provided by Oracle.

Solution & Results LR’s initial mobile application goal was to expose data used in surveying a ship’s equipment such as the hull or engine, which could be further broken down into its constituent parts including a carburetor, etc. Each component requires a

Customer Case Study


survey, which has a range date in which it is valid before another survey is required. This is all to ensure that a ship is sea worthy. The Class Direct mobile application provides surveyors with an intuitive user interface (UI) thanks to ADF Mobile and its rich components that are leveraged to deliver content to surveyors on both iOS and Android. The mobile application is so easy to use that training is not required and it allows for ease of scheduling surveys, a look at historical information, survey status, survey reports, memo items, outstanding conditions of class and more. The basic requirement of the Class Direct mobile application was to provide survey functionality much the same as what was provided through the Class Direct web-based application, which required securely exposing a subset of data from a legacy IBM Mainframe running the hierarchical database Information Management System. The first step for LR IT was to map this data to an Oracle 11g database. This was done through the use of an Oracle Gateway and the creation of a database link thus bringing the data into an Oracle data warehouse. Once the data resided in an Oracle database it became easy enough to expose to multiple channels. Knowing that both web-based and mobile channels of delivery were to be leveraged, LR chose ADF 12c to create their ADF Business Components, which were also exposed as REST/XML web services. This allows them to consume the same business services through both their ADF 12c web-based UI and their ADF Mobile UI. Oracle technology made it easy to secure the REST services. Important to note is that all content delivered to the mobile device is through REST services so the underlying infrastructure is of no concern to the ADF Mobile Application. A service could change and the UI would not be impacted. Security was handled through Microsoft LDAP authenticator passing back an Oracle Web Service Manager (OWSM) token that is used by all REST service requests. In addition, all web service traffic is SSL enabled and a load balancer is placed in front of the WebLogic servers where SSL is terminated. This allows for spreading the load across multiple servers and provides for a much simpler URL naming scheme / SSL certificate setup for future application use. When it came to look-and-feel of the application, LR in-house brand management team provided ideas and direction for the mobile application. This encouraged the use of skinning to easily change the look-and-feel through the use of style-sheets to be applied to the mobile pages in the same way as done with web development. Rather than burdening each page with styling directives, skinning with style-sheets allows for changing the look-and-feel of the application on the fly. Potential enhancements to the Class Direct mobile application that LR is currently investigating include integration with device specific functionality such as geo-location and camera, which are built into Oracle ADF Mobile.

Business Value The Class Direct mobile application provided value to LR through:

• Complete electronic tracking with an immediate picture of the survey status for each LR classed ship.

• Secure and instant access (24 * 7) to LR classed ship surveys. • Provides a more dynamic and focused experience for the end user. • Intuitive user interface with the ability to book surveys online using an

electronic order form.

Customer Case Study


Architecture Simplified view of the mobile architecture.

Oracle Database 11g

JDBC Connection

Pool

ADF Business

Components

RESTful Web Services

Weblogic Server 12.1.2

ADF Mobile 11.1.2.4

Web Service Manager

SSL

Interface Design and Application Views Android Phone

Client data overall snapshot including vessel list and survey status indicator

Vessel survey categories and status

Vessel survey request

Customer Case Study


Android Tablet

Client data overall snapshot including vessel list and survey status indicator

Customer Case Study


Vessel survey categories and status

Customer Case Study


Vessel survey request

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