DFO PacFish

Client Profile

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is responsible for policies and programs in support of Canada’s economic, ecological and scientific interests in oceans and inland waters.

PacFish integrated 150 database and enables cross-Fishery query, reporting and analysis of Catch and Licensing data, from one authoritative system.

The Challenge

The PacFish Project required architecture, design and implementation, for the integration of 150 Catch Management (and related) Databases, across 30 different Fisheries (business units) in the Pacific Region.

Highlights

In the first phase T4Bi lead DFO through an Enterprise Architecture phase and provided the following deliverables; Business Process, Data Architecture, a target vision mapped against existing systems. The second phase required business and systems analysis to identify options which would meet the businesses goals of an integrated repository for cross-Fishery reporting, decision making and for master data management.

In the implementation phase T4Bi worked with subject matter experts to define numerous data standards critical to the business, and implement these in a central Reference Data Repository (RefData). This was complimented with a T4Bi delivered Portal for data catalogue and metadata documentation (Gateway) and an operational data store (ODS) to integrate operational data, reference data and master data from all Fishery Catch and Licensing systems. PacFish enables cross-Fishery query, reporting and analysis of Catch and Licensing data, from one authoritative system (Official Catch).

Highlights of the solution are:

An integrated rich client (Ajax) application to support the business processes,
A RESTful SOA Application Architecture (implemented with .NET Services)
OData data standard http://www.odata.org/
An integrated adhoc multi-dimensional reporting capability,
ESRI ArcSDE spatial data warehouse accessed via OGC services

Technologies Used

Oracle Developer Data Modeler
Oracle Application Express (Apex 3, 4)
Oracle RDBMS
.NET 3.5, 4.0, 4.5
Sencha Ext.JS (2, 3)
ESRI ArcSDE spatial database with OGC services
ESRI ArcSDE 10
DevX Reports
Selenium Testing Suite
VMWare

Ready to Modernize?

Modern IT systems aren’t just about compliance — they’re about enabling agility, scalability, and cost efficiency. They’re also about making the right judgment calls: preserving and evolving what makes your business unique, while integrating or
standardizing what is simply a table-stake capability.

Every year, code maintenance costs average 25% of the original build. The opportunity cost of not modernizing is even higher. The real challenge is making architectural decisions that avoid over-engineering or platform lock-in — and ensure systems remain sustainable.