Oracle Database Solution at the Federal Office for Radiation Protection
Conceptual Design and Implementation of a complex and scalable Register System for managing radioactive radiation sources
The Customer
The Federal Office for Radiation Protection is a self-dependent scientific technological higher federal authority in the operational area of the Federal Ministry for Environment, Environmental Protection, Nature Preservation and Reactor Security. In December 2009 the authority had 730 employees, distributed over the headquarters in Salzgitter and six further locations throughout the nation. The Federal Office’s objective is the safety and protection of the population and environment against damages caused by radiation. Here, different areas are covered such as medical x-raying, nuclear-relating safety while dealing with radioactive substances, and protection against natural radioactivity. Other areas are the protection against ultraviolet radiation and the impact of cellular radio.
The Requirement
The project requirements resulted from the necessity to react to a legal situation, which had resulted from the new “law to monitor highly radioactive radiation sources”. In order to permute this law and to maintain control, it was necessary to develop a registry system for nation-wide data collection and evaluation of highly radioactive enclosed radiation sources in the HRQ (highly radioactive sources) Register. In order to achieve this goal it was necessary to create a new IT infrastructure. It was supposed to map the entire process by means of standardized reports of radiation sources to the BfS, the collection of these reports and providing them. It also had to enable for evaluations to be made.
The Project
Based on the good experiences from a former cooperation between BfS and PROMATIS, from which the Oracle-based implementation of the radiation protection register resulted, BfS chose to work with PROMATIS again to work out a solution based on the Oracle Database 11g.
By means of the proven PROMATIS Procedure Model IQPM™ (Integrated Quality Process Model), which is based on best practice models from 20 years of project experience, the conceptual phase was strongly mini-mized.
In order to ensure for an efficient and prompt implementation the project was broken down into two phases: In release 1 the basic requirements were permuted quickly, in release 2 the improvements from release 1 and detailed requirements by law were realized. In addition, the solution was divided in different modules that were tested and implemented individually. By implementing them individually, based on Java, a high flexibility was achieved. Comprehensive tests before and after delivery and prototyping before implementation were part of the project in addition to the usual PROMATIS approach. Already during the development phase, BfS trained functional and technical key-users. This made additional training unnecessary.
The Solution
The entry interfaces were realized as browser-based forms. The BfS handles the system’s administration and operation with own desk tops and administration sites in web browsers. The output can create PDF reports, overview pages and dashboards.
The technical basis is formed by the Oracle Database 11g and JBoss Application Server. The solution was developed based on the Oracle JDeveloper development environment. Used technologies: Java Server Faces and iBATIS for data base access for OR mapping.
The Conclusion
With the HRQ Register the Federal Office for Radiation Protection now has an instrument that fulfills the monitoring tasks in line with the new legal requirements efficiently. All requirements were fulfilled within the given time and cost frame. The system is built up modularly; it is very flexible and scalable. Modular extensions of the system are currently being planned.
