Delft University of Technology
Faculty Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering
Transport Technology / Logistic Engineering



B.J.L. Kuijpers RoRo-Database Report. A Description of the database

Computer program, Report 99.3.LT.5280, Transport Technology, Logistic Engineering.


This report describes the database I build during my stay at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. This database was built for DFDS Torline. DFDS Torline is a RoRo-shipping company operating in the North Sea and Baltic Sea area. The scope of the database is all the freight traffic between Norway, Sweden and Finland on one hand and Great Britain and the east and western European mainland on the other.

This report describes the working in general of the database. Furthermore the structure of the database is given and all the output of the various queries and reports. Finally a usermanual is given to instruct the user how to use the database in a quick and easy way.

As stated earlier the scope is freight traffic. This means that for RoRo-shipping the capacity is expressed in lane meters. A lane meter can be defined as a unit of deck space, 1 meter in length and the width needed for a trailer (ca 2.8 meter). More definitions can be found in literature but this is the one commonly used. The database contains the available capacity expressed in lane meters in the area of scope. The database is based on weekly schedules, which means that only operators sailing on weekly schedules are taken into the database. There are not that many operators in short sea shipping working with two week or more week schedules. Therefore no real error is made by neglecting those operators. All other operators are taken into the database. Information can be found concerning the ports, the operators, the ships and off course the time table. Through out the database hyperlinks can be found to the WWW.

A database consists of tables. A tables on his part consists of fields. The field is the part of the table that can actually contain the data, called value. A table is linked to the other tables through it's keys. A key is a field in the table which is related to an other field in a different table, also called key. The primary key of a table is a unique field(s) that is supposed to have a unique value. Non-primary keys are called foreign keys.

The Roro-Database consist of 6 tables, of which the table 'tblTimetable' is the core. This table is linked to all the other tables in the database with its keys. This is shown if the following figure.



Within the database a user-friendly userinterface is built that already contains lots of queries and reports. Output of the queries and reports can be found in the report. The user can off course create more queries and reports.

Most of the data in the database was collected from the internet or via direct contact with the companies offering services.

With this database a good piece of marketing equipment is created, since all the available capacity in the area can be found. Furthermore utilisation calculations can be performed using the calculation screen within the database and information about actually used capacity (Shippax for instance).


Reports on Logistic Engineering (in Dutch)
Modified: 2000.02.20; logistics@3mE.tudelft.nl , TU Delft / 3mE / TT / LT.