Federal Trade Commission

Designing An Enterprise Matter Management System

Services Rendered

  • Requirements Analysis
  • COTS Product Evaluations
  • Data Modeling and Design
  • Oracle Development

Solution

InterImage used a team comprised of a data architect and database developers to design and develop an Oracle based client/server MMS. The following tasks were performed by InterImage:

  • Detailed requirements analysis of the matter management related business processes within the FTC
  • An evaluation of COTS products
  • Development of a logical and physical data model using Designer 6i
  • Development of business process models in Designer 6i
  • Development of an Oracle 8i database
  • Development of a user interface using Designer 6i, Oracle Headstart 6.5, and Developer 6i; Designer 6i was used to automatically generate application code
  • Rapid application development (RAD)
  • Development and implementation of a system test plan

Project Description

As a member of the Software Development Branch (SDB) team within the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), InterImage provides full life cycle support for the development of client/server and web-based mission critical applications. In particular, InterImage has played a key role in designing and developing the architecture for FTC’s new Matter Management System (MMS), a backbone application which supports two of the FTC’s primary functions: tracking consumer complaints and approving company mergers.

In an effort to meet several new and evolving business processes, the FTC needed to replace its existing and outdated MMS with a more adaptable, robust, and state-of- the-art system. The objectives of the new system were to:

  • Improve application reliability over the legacy system
  • Preserve substantial Oracle-based legacy system elements
  • Improve the user interface over that of the Windows-based legacy system
  • Replace COTS elements no longer supported by the vendor
  • Provide an architecture to accommodate emerging user requirements
  • Integrate with other FTC applications
  • Integrate with the FTC enterprise data model
  • Ensure a high level of data security

Meeting the Challenge

The resulting system was a significant improvement over its predecessor, providing the following benefits:

  • It successfully addressed all the business processes and user requirements
  • Tight integration with other FTC applications eliminated the need for data synchronization between various systems and ensured accurate reporting of enterprise wide data
  • It provided an extremely high level of data security via the implementation of database roles, privileges, and a security middle tier
  • The utilization of a CASE tool, Oracle Designer 6i, significantly reduced the time to design the system and develop system documentation

The performance, user friendliness, and robustness of the system exceeded user expectations and resulted in a high user acceptance level.