James Dunston, a software developer assigned to the ADEV Application Integration Team, was recently presented with ADEV Tesla Awards in two consecutive months. Tesla Awards are presented at ADEV’s monthly town hall meetings where Senior Program Manager Dan Shaffer communicates with team members about the program’s progress, successes, and challenges. This is the first time a team member has received Tesla Awards in consecutive months.
James won the Tesla Awards for two innovative tools known at ADEV as CONFIG and WebSeal Clubber. The Tesla Award is named in honor of Nikola Tesla, one of history’s great innovators and inventors. It is presented to ADEV team members who contribute to the program’s efforts with innovative tools and improvements.
Streamlining Configuration Key Management
Prior to the implementation of CONFIG, each web application being developed by ADEV used its own methods to determine configuration keys and how to resolve their values. Plus, there was no consistent method to resolve missing or unexpected data with those maintaining configuration keys. Additionally, each SOAP service required an individually created client to allow integration with AuthLib, which then had to be manually maintained. CONFIG creates a single method for automatic configuration discovery and problem reporting to all partnering software. It also removes the need for individual clients by constructing them at runtime. These innovations benefit developers by freeing them from low-level concerns and allowing them to focus on high performing features and secure code.
Emulating WebSeal SAML Assertions in a Development Environment
WebSeal Clubber also improves development efforts as well as code security. In the enterprise production environment, WebSeal uses a SAML assertion with requests to ensure proper authorization and security. Our partner in creating an emulated customer’s production environment for development could not easily replicate this security approach. In order to properly develop and test in the emulated environment, the application code would have to include the ability to turn on and off the security logic used for this authentication, which could have inherent security risks. WebSeal Clubber replicates the SAML assertions used by WebSeal, so development and testing can take place with all the security code and tools in place that the production environment would have. This provides for secure code and for more efficient and effective development and test processes.
Each Tesla Award includes a framed certificate, a Tesla Bobblehead, and a gift card. Congratulations James, and thanks for the great work.
Don Reed is a Senior Technical Writer and Project Support Specialist with the ADEV program. His background includes engineering and programing, project management, quality and business improvement, and business-technical communication. Don has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a M.A. in Communication from Saint Louis University.