Fisheries and Oceans Canada – PADS

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. The Pacific Age Lab is a high-calibre facility that processes over 200,000 biological specimens from around North America every year.

Integrating all data and processes provides DFO with a significant cost saving and quality improvement

The Challenge

DFO needed to migrate their legacy Ingres/VAX application to newer technology, while preserving the productivity advantages of the old character-based application in a GUI environment. The variability of data across Species, Methods, and Clients Projects was a key requirement to enabling future extensibility.

Solution Highlights

In about 3 months and 75 person days T4Bi migrated the existing application to a GUI-based system, sharing the same data and application framework previously developed for the DFO NuSEDS project. The change of technology to data entry via a Web browser required a complete redesign of the processes for entering and managing data, as well as powerful productivity features to avoid increasing the time taken to process common and exceptional cases.

Technologies Used

Currently, the applications have been deployed using Apache Tomcat.

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.