Tasper is a Dutch application in which employee’s can choose their own package of secondary conditions of labour. For clients it can be interesting to bye a package like this from the shelf rather than making it all yourself as ESS. These clients would need to integrate Tasper with their own HCM module, by means of synchronization. We have chosen to synchronize Peoplesoft HCM with Tasper by means of synchronous XML messaging.

The Choice for Messaging.

An alternative to messaging would be using a databaselink. Using the databaselink it would be possible to use the databaselink in combination with Oracle triggers. If I would commit a change in Tasper it would immediately would be inserted in the relevant record in PeopleSoft. This choice would bring along with it the risk that errors in one system would affect the other system. Instead it would also be possible to synchronize only during a batch update. Then the synchronization would have a delay of up to 1 day. Besides in the near further there will probably be a tendency to connect all relevant applications to each other by means of a BUS and/or BPEL, which would work by means of messaging as well. These are all reasons to choose for messaging as a means of synchronization.

In this blog we’ll continue where we left some time ago. The aim is to create a page containing the blocks which can be ordered by the user. First we create a new page containing some groupboxes with content. Every groupbox must be placed in a container, for we will switch groupboxes within these containers. To create a container, draw a frame around each individual groupbox and disable the frame border. To be able to address the groupboxes later, add a custom style class (added to the stylesheet), lets say ‘DRAGGABLE’ to each groupbox. Put a static html object at the bottom of your page in which we’ll put our javascript. So far for the server side.