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.

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LLOYDS REGISTER

Lloyds 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, Lloyds 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 Lloyds Register Group
Services Limited
Executive Summary
After successfully re-developing a number of public-facing web sites using
Oracle ADF 11g, Lloyds 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
Lloyds Register is a global engineering, technical and business services
organization wholly owned by the Lloyds 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 customers 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
LRs initial mobile application goal was to expose data used in surveying a ships
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




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.

2
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




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.

3

Architecture
Simplified view of the mobile architecture.
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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




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.

4

Android Tablet

Client data overall snapshot including vessel list and survey status indicator

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.

5

Vessel survey categories and status

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.

6

Vessel survey request