1. Using Web Services
  2. API Call Basics

API Call Basics

API calls represent specific operations that your client applications can invoke at runtime to perform tasks, for example:

  • Query data in your organization

  • Add, update, and delete data

Characteristics of API Calls

All API calls are:

  • Service Requests and Responses: Your client application prepares and submits a service request to the Taleo Web service via the API, the Taleo Web service processes the request and returns a response, and the client application handles the response.

  • Synchronous: Once the API call is invoked, your client application waits until it receives a response from the service.

  • Committed Automatically: An application transaction is created for every operation that writes to a Taleo object. If the operation completes successfully, this transaction is automatically committed. If an error occurs while performing the operation, the transaction is automatically rolled back. For example, if a client application attempts to create a new candidate that includes one application, and the application creation fails, neither the candidate nor the application will be created and an error will be returned to the client application.

API Usage Limits and Metering

To protect the Taleo systems and your organization's data reliability, security, and scalability, the API is subject to different usage limits and metering. The limits documented in the following sections are subject to change in future releases. A more detailed documentation of the Taleo web service usage limits and metering is available on demand. Contact your Customer Representative to request this document.

Global Usage Metering

Taleo may monitor every API call for metering, accounting, or troubleshooting purposes.

Global Usage Limits

The following limits apply for any incoming Web service request:

  • Maximum of 20 concurrent Web service calls per JVM: If a client application invokes a Web service while 20 Web services are running, access will be denied to that Web service and a fault message is returned to the client application.

  • Maximum of 25,000 Web service calls per day: The counter begins at the first API call and is reset at midnight every day.

Export Usage Limits

The export service is generic and, as opposed to other Web services that only handle one entity at a time, can be used to export a large amount of entities. Therefore, the following additional limits apply for export requests only:

  • Maximum of 200 records per export call: If your request produces more than 200 records, you may consider using Taleo Connect Client (http://www.taleo.com/solutions/connect.php), which uses an asynchronous processing for large, time- and resource-consuming integration requests. Alternatively, if a synchronous invocation is required, you must use the pagination mechanism of the export Web service.

  • Maximum of 250,000 export records per day: The counter begins at the first export API call and is reset at midnight every day.

  • Maximum response size of 2048 Kilobytes (2 MB) per export call: If an API call produces a response that exceeds this size, the request is aborted and a fault message is returned to the client application. By the nature of Web service synchronous calls, a request should not produce a response larger than this size: in most cases, this is due to an incorrect request, for example, with invalid or missing request filterings.

  • Maximum of 90 seconds per export call: If an API call takes longer than 90 seconds to complete, the request is aborted and a fault message is returned to the client application. Consider splitting the complex export request into several smaller and simpler ones. Additionally, validate the export complexity and if needed, add additional filterings that could reduce the request execution time.