In the Human Resource industry (HR), companies often use assessment providers to
evaluate the skills of candidates and employees. Currently, HR systems, customer
systems and assessment vendor systems are unable to universally exchange information
in spite of the existence of an HR-XML standard. The inability of systems to talk
with each other leaves companies with the burden of keying data to multiple systems
or writing programs to support a particular vendor.
Caliper Corporation, a leading provider of tools and services for Human Resources,
decided to create the first transport management system for the universal exchange
of HR-XML documents via web services for both the Microsoft .Net and Java
platforms. Successful creation of this system would give Caliper a unique
advantage in the rapidly expanding HR services market.
Caliper's management had conceived of developing a transport mechanism that would
provide guaranteed, secure delivery of HR-XML documents to and from their
workflow server. However, they needed expert support to turn that concept into
reality. Caliper brought in Berwick Heights Software to architect, design and
implement a solution. Bryan Martin, VP of Global Operations at Caliper,
comments, "Berwick Heights Software not only brings top technical skills to the
project but can easily analyze business processes so that technology is
appropriately applied."
In an on-site planning meeting with Berwick Heights' president, Stuart Jones,
Caliper's management described their business needs in areas such as document
workflow and security. Berwick Heights brought to light other important issues
such as system monitoring, exception handling and error notification,
configuration, installation and testing. Thorough consideration of these
operational issues upfront ensured that the platform would be operational
over the long term, when large volumes of HR-XML documents would flow in and
out of the system. After working through these issues in person, Dr. Jones
created a comprehensive Application Requirements Document that thoroughly
described the decisions that had been made. A Statement of Work gave both
sides a clear idea of what was to be accomplished and in what timeframe.
Once the development path was approved, Berwick Heights defined a series of
3-4 week milestones and created a test harness that enabled Caliper to confirm
that requirements and milestones were being met. Dr. Jones comments, "Having
frequent, meaningful milestones has many benefits. They give us the opportunity
to make small, manageable course corrections and eliminate the possibility of
discovering major problems after a long development period. This style of rapid
development gave Caliper peace of mind and kept management informed of progress."
Dr. Jones elaborates, "Keeping management informed of milestones is the key to
ensuring their continued support as development progresses."
One of the first major design decisions was to use WS-* technology to support
interoperability between differing web service platforms. Although initially
Caliper decided to use the Microsoft .Net platform, Berwick Heights' use of WS-*
gave Caliper the flexibility to plan for a future Java-based implementation.
By using Microsoft .Net and extending the Web Service Enhancements (WSE) toolkit,
Berwick Heights was able to quickly implement a web service that met each of
Caliper's security requirements in the areas of authentication, authorization,
validation and message privacy. Authentication was straightforward because
WSE provides this function out-of-the-box. The other three policies, however,
required extending the WSE libraries and producing custom web service policies
(WS-Policy) to describe how these policies were enforced.
• Encryption: Although WS-Security provides a way to encrypt
web service payloads, it is an all-or-nothing proposition. The types of payloads
that Caliper needed to process tended to be relatively large with only portions
of the payload needing encryption.
• Validation: Caliper also wanted to validate the payloads using
versioned XSD schema before placing the HR-XML documents in their workflow
server queue.
• Authorization: Finally, Caliper wanted to use Microsoft
Authorization Manager to authorize users vis-à-vis HR-XML transactions in a
dynamic and configurable way.
Through the creation of custom policies, Berwick Heights met all of Caliper's
security needs. Mr. Martin states, "Berwick Heights Software is an excellent
resource for our more complex development projects."
In a matter of months, Berwick Heights delivered a finished product along with
a test plan that Caliper could use to see that the deliverables had been
completed. By creating the first platform for the universal delivery of
HR-XML documents, Caliper maintains its edge as a leading service provider
in the HR industry. VP Bryan Martin again comments, "Berwick Heights continues
to exceed our expectations on the quality of their deliverables. I have found
that their customer service and follow up around their work is
extraordinary. Overall, Berwick Heights Software is one of the best developers
I have worked with."
