Web Service Integration
Public Sector Media Portal
Introduction
A provider of public-sector IT services asked LightMedia to develop the front-end of a high traffic public website for a new government initiative.
The Project
This project involved building a portal site which integrated with the provider's existing WCF SOAP web service, which could be sold as part of a package of features to the provider's own public-sector clients.
Key requirements of the portal site were that it be highly secure (and would pass full penetration testing), easy to deploy and configure in a wide range of server environments, and have full legacy browser support down to IE6.
The product features meant that the portal had to retrieve videos, documents and other media through the web service as blocks of binary data, and then work out how to split the data across multiple HTTP responses (for instance as the user interacted with a video player that streamed and buffered parts of the video as needed).
To configure the web service upon deployment required changing settings on the HTTP binding such as timeouts and buffer sizes, to allow through large media files. We agreed optimum values with the client based on their test data sets, which we then described how to set in detailed technical documentation.
As well as documentation for the initial deployment, we also needed to write comprehensive user guides for administrators (who were not technical staff) to describe how to change text, images, tables and other content on a live site.
A full set of testing reports were completed and provided to the client, with each result cross-checked by multiple members of the LightMedia development team to ensure compliance with all parts of the project specification. Each report covered functionality for all key user workflows, error-handling, aesthetics in an agreed range of browsers and site performance targets.
In terms of security the client was particularly concerned about mitigating attempts at brute-force attacks on user login details, without inconveniencing normal users. To meet this requirement LightMedia implemented a sophisticated automatic-lockout system which would progressively restrict a user's ability to log in after multiple failed attempts.
Outcomes
The outcome of the project was that the client received a high-quality, well-documented and flexible site which met every functional and performance requirement and which they would be proud to have as part of their product offering to the service provider's own clients.
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