Conversation with the JA-SIG Board

1. Conversation with the JA-SIG Board Ted Dodds University of British Columbia Ian Dolphin University of Hull Patty Gertz Princeton University Mark Mara Cornell University Jonathan Markow Columbia University William G. Thompson, Jr. Rutgers University Barry Walsh Indiana University December 5th 2005

2. JA-SIG: What Defines Us • JA-SIG is Community and Collaboration among Higher Ed institutions world-wide • JA-SIG supports its community through knowledge sharing • JA-SIG is Developers, Managers, Content Providers, Vendors • JA-SIG sponsors Open Source projects • JA-SIG partners with vendors and the extended community to foster new Open Source business models for higher ed

3. JA-SIG Activities • Conferences • Clearinghouse • Partnerships • Projects • HyperContent • CAS • uPortal • Futures

4. JA-SIG Clearinghouse • A common place for software that is considered to be of general use to the community • Machine is owned by the JA-SIG. ja-sig.org and uportal.org are owned by the JA-SIG. • Collaboration tools • Jira for issues tracking • Confluence for discussions surrounding our sanctioned products • Luntbuild for nightly builds • Fisheye Source code visualization tool

5. JA-SIG Clearinghouse • Home for CVS, JA-SIG and uPortal websites, and conference software • Clearinghouse Application currently has 1490 members, 56 contributions. This is a vehicle for making contributions to the community.

6. JA-SIG HyperContent • June, 2005: v.2.0. Runs standalone without a portal requirement • Only dependencies are Java SDK 1.4, servlet engine, and hard disk. • Highly customizable; enhanced ease of use/navigation. • Full multi-server transaction support at level of individual files, such as XML documents, serialized objects, etc. • Projects can define custom workflows, groups and permissions, in addition to their own assets and processing pipelines.

7. JA-SIG CAS 3.0 • Centralized Web Authentication • Proxy Authentication / Delegated Authority • Interoperability • Java, JSP, PL/SQL, ASP, Apache, PAM, Perl, Zope, WebObjects, ColdFusion, Acegi, CAS Generic Handler • CASifying Applications • Sakai, Oracle Calendar, Oracle Portal, Oracle Financials,... • CASified Applications • uPortal, Mantis, pNews, Sympa, TikiWiki

8. JA-SIG CAS 3.0 • CAS 3.0.2 is the current production ready release • CAS 3 is 100% backward compatible with CAS 2.0 clients • CAS 3 running in production at JA-SIG and Rutgers • UConn, Case Western Reserve planned deployments this year • ESUP-Portail to incorporate CAS 3 in their distribution in early 2006

9. JA-SIG Futures • New Sponsorships • New Community Source Initiatives • Enterprise Service Bus • Community Source SIS • Sustainability

10. Enterprise Service Bus: Wikipedia: • It requires the clear separation of message headers and message body • It is usually operating system and language independent; it should work between Java and .NET applications, for example • It (often) uses XML and Web services to transport messages • It includes adapter standards (such as J2C) for incorporating existing applications into the bus • It includes support for asynchronous processing

11. Enterprise Service Bus: Wikipedia: • It includes intelligent, content-based routing • It includes a standardized security model to authorize, authenticate and audit use of the ESB • It includes transformation services (such as XSLT) between the format of the sending application and the receiving application, including the transformation of data formats

12. Enterprise Service Bus: Wikipedia: • It includes validation against schemas for sending and receiving messages • It can uniformly apply business rules, enrichment of the message from other sources, splitting and combining of multiple messages, and the handling of exceptions • It can conditionally route or transform messages based on a central policy • It is monitored for message latency and other characteristics described in a Service Level Agreement

13. Enterprise Service Bus: Wikipedia: • It (often) facilitates “service classes,” responding appropriately to higher and lower priority users • It supports queuing, holding messages if applications are temporarily unavailable • It handles a “publish and subscribe” messaging model, including event handling

14. Enterprise Service Bus • OneStart Workflow • Mediated activities • Process spawns • Individual initiates • Some next steps • Greater simplification for participating apps • Process to Process • Next stage of evolution • ESB

15. Community Source SIS • Time is right for the next generation • Records Information Services • SIS becomes Student Services System • Exceptionally configurable • Not best practice – your practice • Rethinking underlying architecture • Identity, Workflow, Rules

16. Community Source SIS • Build on growing maturity of community source model • Small, committed core group with skin in the game • Project framework, priority setting • Just beginning a planning process • Further information • UBC presentation: today at 11:30 • IBM White Paper

17. uPortal • Strategic Direction • Health and Sustainability • Project Liaison • Community Development • Sakai/Mellon funding ends 12/05 • uPortal 3.0 shifts back to community process • Roadmap • Engage existing and future uPortal adopters • Expected release at JA-SIG Summer conference in Vancouver, June 2006

19. QUESTIONS

20. uPortal Development Funding for the last two years of research and development on the next generation uPortal has been made possible by our partnership with the Sakai project and through a generous Mellon Foundation grant. This work has made significant progress on the next generation uPortal and has had considerable impact on improving the current production version. The initial grant expires at the end of this year and the responsibility of charting a path for the uPortal 3.x branch and the next generation uPortal shifts to the uPortal community process.

21. uPortal Strategic Direction The JA-SIG Board is committed to ensuring the health and sustainability of its sponsored projects and for providing strategic direction that is consistent with our stated purpose and the needs of the community and our commercial partners. The role of Project Liaison is the primary way the Board executes this responsibility. The Project Liaison maintains close relationship with project leaders and commercial partners and is the single point of contact for the JA-SIG Board and project stakeholders. Bill Thompson is currently serving as Project Liaison for the uPortal project.

22. uPortal Development Roadmap JA-SIG is committed to providing strategic direction for uPortal that is consistent with our stated purpose and the needs of the community and our commercial partners. JA-SIG is now moving forward to gather requirements that will guide the next generation of uPortal. Over the next six months and in partnership with the uPortal community we will merge requirements identified as part of the Sakai/uPortal grant project with those identified by working with the current and future uPortal users, both commercial and institutional. This effort will result in a uPortal Development Roadmap and expected to be released at the Vancouver JA-SIG meeting is in June, 2006.