Development and Implementation of Integrated Port Management System
Who is the client?
The project “Integrated Port Management System” was done for one of the largest and busiest Ports in Southeast Asia that handles bulk, break-bulk, roll on/roll off (ro-ro) and containerized cargo.
Need for real time exchange of data
What was the client’s initial problem?
The client needed a single web-enabled enterprise-wide system that integrates all the mission critical activities of the port by enabling real-time exchange of data and information among different departments of the port. They were also looking for seamless integration with a host of third-party systems like Public Services Portal, National Authentication System, Customs, SPARCS and so on. Previously, different departments had their own software and databases working in silos with no system-level integration among the departments. The exchange of data was done manually via excel sheets or other means. Moreover, there was no automatic integration with third-party systems. There were multiple versions of same data in many cases leading to inefficient operations and poor reporting besides losing substantial effort in synchronizing multiples sets of data.
Identified hidden business assets,
gaps and redundancies
What Services did Data-Core Provide?
The client engaged Data-Core to solve diverse problems faced by different departments and the port as a whole. The Data-Core team initiated the process by defining the scope of the project based on the above business case and establishing a target vision so that all the stakeholders were on the same page.
The team next conceptualized the baseline architecture. While creating a baseline description, the team created an inventory of existing systems and their components and evaluated their relationships. This helped the team identify hidden business assets, gaps, and redundancies.
The target architecture was defined taking the baseline architecture and target vision as inputs. The solution was subsequently designed, developed and implemented based on the above target architecture. Following architecture domains were defined and implemented:
- Business Architecture which defined the key business processes of the Port and the inter-relationships between the business processes.The entire business processes of the port were modeled using industry standard Unified Modeling Language (UML).
- Data Architecture described the structure of the Port’s logical and physical data assets and the associated data management resources. A single centralized and relational database was defined to ensure a single version of data and to enable seamless information sharing among different departments and functions of the port. Oracle database was recommended by us for building the centralized database.
- Application Architecture provided a blueprint for the individual modules to be deployed and the inter-relationships/interactions between the loosely coupled modules of the system as well as integration of the system with other third party systems via web services.The multi-tiered application architecture, based on Java/JEE technologies, adopted the MVC framework that ensured clean separation of UI, business logic and data.
The development team extensively used EJBs as the middleware components. The greatest benefit of using EJB components oriented middleware was that the EJB container took on the responsibility for using the underlying middleware services for communication, persistence, transactions, security and so forth while developers concentrated just on the business logic. Web components were built using JSP and JSTL. Additionally, bi-directional communication with heterogeneous third-party systems was achieved through RESTful web services.
