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JASIG Newsletter - December 2008
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1 Upcoming Events
1.1 JASIG Spring Conference - Dallas, Texas (March 1-4, 2009)
1.2 EclipseCon 2009 - Santa Clara, California (March 23-26, 2009)
1.3 JavaOne 2009 - San Francisco, California (June 2-5, 2009)
1.4 O'Reilly OSCON 2009 - San Jose, California (July 20-24, 2009)

2 JASIG Project Updates
2.1 Central Authentication Service (CAS)
2.1.1 CAS4 Blog Entries & Code
2.1.2 CAS Steering Committee Update
2.1.3 CAS Client for Java 3.1.5 Release
2.1.4 CAS in the Wild
2.1.5 CAS Deployers
2.1.6 CAS @ the Upcoming Conference
2.1.7 Hobsons EMT Connect CRM to Include CAS Support
2.2 uPortal
2.2.1 uPortal 3 Adoption
2.2.2 uPortal @ Spring Conference 2009

3 Around JASIG
3.1 Unicon Announces uPortal 3 Platform Training and Portlet Development Training
3.2 Webinar - Take a Guided Tour of uPortal 3 (Thursday, January 15, 2009, 2 pm Eastern)

4 Notes from the Open Source Community
4.1 MySQL Opens Opportunities in Education

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1 Upcoming Events

1.1 JASIG Spring Conference - Dallas, Texas (March 1-4, 2009)

"Higher Education Open Source Communities - Working Together"
March 1-4, 2009
Dallas, Texas, USA

"The JA-SIG Spring 2009 Conference will provide an unprecedented opportunity to meet and learn from each other. We're hoping to see you there!"

Spring Conference - Supplementary Seminars: http://www.ja-sig.org/conferences/09spring/seminars.html
Spring Conference Home: http://www.ja-sig.org/conferences/09spring/index.html

1.2 EclipseCon 2009 - Santa Clara, California (March 23-26, 2009)

"The Eclipse Foundation is pleased to announce EclipseCon 2009, March 23rd - 26th, 2009, in Santa Clara, California. The entire Eclipse community is invited to participate."

Source: http://www.eclipsecon.org/2009/
Official Blog: http://eclipsecon.blogspot.com/

1.3 JavaOne 2009 - San Francisco, California (June 2-5, 2009)

"June will be a good time in San Francisco. JavaOne will kick off the month with another amazing event bringing together some of the most influential leaders in technology. Be sure to join us as experts talk about Java technology, RIA's, scripting, JavaFX, Ajax, Web 2.0 and so much more. It's an excellent time to network with peers, be with fellow community members and spend time learning, listening and a week of opportunity."

Source: http://java.sun.com/javaone/index.jsp
Reference: http://developers.sun.com/learning/javaoneonline/

1.4 O'Reilly OSCON 2009 - San Jose, California (July 20-24, 2009)

"Join us at OSCON 2009, the crossroads of all things open source. Come together with 3,000 of the best, brightest, and most interesting people to explore what's new and to help define, maintain, and extend the identity of what it means to be open source. OSCON is the place to be inspired and challenged, renew bonds to community, make new connections, and discover the most relevant projects and products to help you do your best."

Source: OSCON (Open Source Convention) web site: http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2009/public/content/home

2 JASIG Project Updates

2.1 CAS

2.1.1 CAS4 Blog Entries & Code

Scott Battaglia, Lead Architect of JASIG Central Authentication Service, has taken to his blog in an effort for a more transparent development process. You can find three entries related to the design, architecture, and configuration here:

These blog entries, in combination with the list, will be used to solicit feedback about design and extension points, as well as common use cases. We encourage you to contribute to the discussion on whichever medium suits you (either blog or mailing list).

2.1.2 CAS Steering Committee Update

The CAS Steering Committee continues to provide general guidance and proposals for the CAS Community. The Steering Committee is currently working on (1) suggestions for suggesting enhancements to both the CAS protocol and the CAS software and (2) guidelines for contributing to the CAS project. All CAS Steering Committee meeting announcements and notes can be found in their Wiki Space: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/CASST/Home

The steering committee also hosts monthly community conference calls. Interested parties should contact Benn Oshrin or Scott Battaglia.

2.1.3 CAS Client for Java 3.1.5 Release

The JASIG CAS Client for Java 3.1.5 has been released. It should start appearing in the Public Maven2 repository by 12/19/2008. This release includes a fix to restore Java 1.4 JVM compile-time compatibility as well as fix the JIRA support so that it actually works.

2.1.4 CAS in the Wild

The next release of Spring Security will include the JASIG CAS Client for Java 3.1.5
CAS4 code has started to appear in the JASIG Subversion repository.

2.1.5 CAS Deployers

If you're a new CAS deployer, please take a moment to let us know by emailing Scott Battaglia <scott.battaglia@gmail.com>.

2.1.6 CAS @ the Upcoming Conference

While presentation proposals are still be drafted, we do know that there will be a Pre-Conference seminar given by Adam Rybicki, VP @ Unicon on CAS3: http://www.ja-sig.org/conferences/09spring/seminars.html

2.1.7 Hobsons EMT Connect CRM to Include CAS Support

Hobsons's upcoming EMT Connect CRM product will include support for JASIG CAS. For more information, please see their press release: http://pr-gb.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=65159&Itemid=34

2.2 uPortal

2.2.1 uPortal 3 Adoption

This year has been a busy one for those institutions implementing uPortal 3. Read all about their efforts on the JASIG wiki at: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/x/vQXP . If you are investigating the adoption of uPortal 3.X and have not yet including your institution's information on this page, please do so. We'd love to hear your story.

2.2.2 uPortal @ Spring Conference 2009

Are you going to Spring Conference 2009 in Dallas ("Higher Education Open Source Communities - Working Together")? Consider registrating for a Supplementary Seminar. Offerings include "Migrating to uPortal 3", "Skinning uPortal 3", and "Getting Started with uPortal".

3 Around JASIG

3.1 Unicon Announces uPortal 3 Platform Training and Portlet Development Training

Phoenix, AZ - December 16, 2008 — Unicon, Inc., the leading provider of open source software consulting services for the education market, today announced it will be offering uPortal 3 training courses to enterprise IT staff and Web portal developers interested in attending a 3-day, hands-on session covering everything from introductory basics to authentication and portlet development. The first training course titled, "uPortal 3.0 Platform Training", will take place January 20-22, 2009 at Unicon's corporate offices in Chandler, Arizona. The second course titled, "Portlet Development Training" will take place March 5-7, 2009 at the Sheraton Dallas Hotel in Dallas, Texas and coincides with the JA-SIG Spring Conference. For more information or to register for the training courses, visit: http://www.unicon.net/company/news/events.

Since 1999, Unicon's consulting group has provided colleges and universities with uPortal as well as related services and support for their online campus deployments. Unicon has also made significant development, technology, and feature contributions to the uPortal platform and community.

uPortal 3.0 Platform Training Overview
This course serves as an introduction and guide to portals, portlets, and uPortal and encompasses best practices for leveraging the open-source uPortal software and its community. Topics include: uPortal Overview, Authentication and Authorization, Groups and Permissions Framework, Aggregated and Template Layouts, Administrative Channels, Permissions Manager, Accessing User Attributes and Information and more.
Portlet Development Training Overview
This course serves as an introduction and guide to developing standards-compliant portlets and covers items from the Portlet API and the building and deployment of portlets to techniques for organizing code in a clean architecturally-sound way. uPortal is used as the portal platform during the course, but the portlet development skills apply to any JSR 168 compliant platform. Topics include: Portlet Specification Overview, Apache Pluto Overview, Portlet API, Obtaining 3rd-party Portlets, Portlet Installation, Development Environment, Use of Eclipse IDE, Hello World Portlet, Advanced Portlet Applications, Portlet Security, Debugging Portlets, Using WSRP, and uPortal Roadmap.

About Unicon
Unicon, Inc. specializes in providing software consulting services including software engineering, systems integration, and the delivery of technology solutions and support. The company effectively utilizes open-source frameworks, applications, and software to provide enterprise-level portal, collaboration, learning, messaging, and secure authentication solutions for higher education institutions worldwide. Unicon is a Sakai Commercial Affiliate for the community source Collaboration and Learning Environment and also a commercial affiliate of the uPortal open source Web portal initiative. Unicon strives to base its solutions on standards-based, open source technology for increased productivity and reduced costs. For more information, visit: www.unicon.net.

Unicon is a Registered Trademark of Unicon, Inc. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners.

3.2 Webinar - Take a Guided Tour of uPortal 3 (Thursday, January 15, 2009, 2 pm Eastern)

"Explore uPortal 3's capabilities, tools, and best practices" with Unicon's Andrew Petro.

See a demonstration of the uPortal 3 framework as well as a number of open source channels and portlets.
uPortal 3 uses Maven 2 dependency management and build technology. Learn the opportunities this creates for better managing locally customized uPortal environments.
Review the features and extension points of the new Universality default theme and skin
Learn about compelling import-export functionality and how it can make uPortal upgrades and migrations revolutionarily easier
See how CAS 3 is included with uPortal 3 and discuss the login experiences this enables
Interact with a uPortal expert and ask questions along the way

For further information on the Webinar, visit the registration web site at: http://www.unicon.net/node/1142

Source: Unicon @ http://www.unicon.net

4 Notes from the Open Source Community

4.1 MySQL Opens Opportunities in Education

On campus, open source is opening opportunities. Consider Mark Zuckerberg, former Harvard University undergrad.

As a Harvard sophomore in 2004, Zuckerberg used the open source MySQL database as a platform to build a small community Web site on which Harvard students could post profiles and photos, share their interests, and build relationships.

The Web site that Zuckerberg built on MySQL is now called Facebook. As its CEO, Zuckerberg is worth what Forbes estimates at $1.5 billion. With 90 million active users and publication in 15 languages, Facebook is one of the world's most-trafficked Web sites, according to Internet tracker comScore.

One thing hasn't changed throughout Facebook's meteoric growth — MySQL continues to power the site's data infrastructure, with deployments on roughly 1800 servers and performance to spare.

"We asked Mark Zuckerberg why he used MySQL and it was basically an open source tool that he learned at the university," said Zack Urlocker, Sun MySQL VP of products. "He started building Facebook on MySQL because it was the right tool for the job."

"Going from a university dorm room to a company that has more than 1800 servers running MySQL is something that we think is pretty exciting," Urlocker said. "It just goes to show you that a student with a good idea can go a long way."

What Open Source MySQL Means for Education

As open source enthusiasts know, MySQL is the "M" in the popular LAMP and SAMP stacks, comprised of Linux or OpenSolaris, Apache, MySQL, and the Perl/Python/PHP scripting languages. Education has been a pioneer in the use of LAMP and SAMP, capitalizing on the cost savings and flexibility of these open source stacks. Now, Sun's $1 billion acquisition of MySQL in early 2008 offers education new opportunities for database affordability, performance, and innovation, backed by 24x7 Sun support.

Budget-constrained universities are broadening open source deployments to contain costs. On the database side, the savings can be dramatic. For instance, three-year total cost of ownership for a typical MySQL deployment, including support, can be about one-tenth the cost of a comparable proprietary database installation.

And with MySQL Enterprise Unlimited, IT can deploy an unlimited number of MySQL Enterprise servers for the price of a single CPU (more than $40,000) of Oracle Enterprise Edition. The savings are even greater for education, as Sun offers education-only discounts of up to 40 percent on MySQL Enterprise Unlimited with Gold or Platinum support.

"Over the last five years, we've seen tremendous adoption of the open source stack in universities. It usually comes down to where a school wants to spend its budget, and open source is delivering more bang for the buck," Urlocker said. "IT organizations in universities are facing a lot of budgetary pressures, and with MySQL they're able to stretch their budgets further and work more cost-effectively."

Low cost and high performance are helping to drive roughly 70,000 MySQL downloads daily, and are fueling expansion of MySQL footprints at such institutional MySQL users as Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin, MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, and Cal Tech, both as a classroom teaching tool and a datacenter technology.

MySQL as a Learning and Teaching Tool
Free to download, MySQL offers faculty and students alike a readily learned database platform for computer science laboratories. Extensive support for Ruby, Java, PHP, Perl, Python, and other languages let users innovate and experiment with the help of a dynamic open source Web community that offers message forums, how-to tips, documentation, and more.

"A lot of it's driven by the fact that it's easy to give students access to MySQL technology," Urlocker said. "People just download the database, and students can develop the skills they need to enter the workforce. MySQL is pretty standard fare in computer science and software engineering curricula."

MySQL as a Core Database Platform for Education IT
Like the IT industry at large, education IT environments are typically heterogeneous, with a mix of legacy and enterprise systems. Those can exact a high cost in maintenance and licensing. As a result, momentum is strong among primary, secondary, and higher education institutions to transition to open source databases, operating systems, and applications to support such core areas as tuition and loan processing, administrative computing, personnel and records management, and more.

MySQL is also popular for academic science and research. MIT's Lincoln Labs, for instance, uses it to record satellite imaging data, Urlocker said. "It's very, very high streams data — thousands of records per second recorded using MySQL — and it's good, innovative scientific research that MySQL and Sun are helping enable," he said.

The Facebook site that one-time Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg launched isn't the only social utility that relies on MySQL to power its operations. In August, Sun announced that LinkedIn, the professional network with more than 25 million members, selected MySQL Enterprise to support its rapid growth.

To Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, that major customer win helps to answer the MySQL question he's asked most frequently by traditional customers ... "but does MySQL scale?" Read Jonathan's Blog on LinkedIn's selection of MySQL and a phenomenon that will be familiar to any open source technologist in education IT — how the "invisible hand of open source" is driving cost-effective business performance.

With Sun's commitment to education and enhancements to MySQL, the open opportunities for academia are broader than ever.

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JASIG Newsletter - December 2008
wiki-copy: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/Newsletter+-+200812+-+December+2008

Archives available in the JASIG wiki at: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/Newsletter

If your institution or company has items of interest to the JASIG membership, please submit them via email to newsletter at ja-sig dot org.

The next JASIG Newsletter will be published on or about January 16th, 2009. Articles for that edition of the newsletter should be submitted no later than Thursday, January 15th, 2009. Thanks!

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