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Jasig Newsletter - June 2009

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1 Upcoming Events

1.1 10th Sakai Conference - Cambridge, Massachusetts (July 8-10, 2009)
1.2 Beyond the Repository Fringe - Edinburgh, UK (July 30-31, 2009)
1.3 The Jasig Fall 2009 Unconference is Coming! (September 28 - October 2, 2009)
1.4 EDUCAUSE 2009 Annual Conference - Denver, Colorado (November 3-6, 2009)
1.5 Kuali Days VIII Announced! - San Antonio, Texas (November 17 and 18, 2009)

2 Jasig Project Updates

2.1 Central Authentication Service (CAS)
2.1.1 CAS Server
2.1.2 CAS Clients
2.1.3 CAS Community Calls
2.2 uPortal
2.2.1 uPortal Steering Committee Stakeholder Elections
2.2.2 uPortal 3.1 Technical Webinar
2.2.3 Gettysburg Portals Conference Update

3 Jasig Incubator

3.1 Notes from the Incubation Working Group

4 Around Jasig

4.1 Fluid Infusion 1.1 Release
4.2 Four Major Universities Select Unicon for Open Source Support of Sakai, uPortal, and CAS

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1 Upcoming Events

1.1 10th Sakai Conference - Cambridge, Massachusetts (July 8-10, 2009)

"The 10th Sakai Conference will be taking place in beautiful Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sakai conferences are high-energy events that bring together users and developers of Sakai to talk about past successes and challenges and to peer into the future for the Sakai product and community. It's an essential event if you're using or considering using the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment."

Visit the conference website for further information: https://educonference.com/sakai/boston/index.php

1.2 Beyond the Repository Fringe - Edinburgh, UK (July 30-31, 2009)

"The second un-conference with an unorthodox 'fringe' approach to repositories. This year we celebrate all things new in a recently-completed and award-winning venue, with a programme which includes novel Pecha Kucha presentations.

Roll up for a great show!"

Source URL: http://beyondtherepositoryfringe-emailinvite.eventbrite.com/
More info: http://www.dspace.org/index.php/component/option,com_jcalpro/Itemid,314/extid,88/extmode,view/

1.3 The Jasig Fall 2009 Unconference is Coming!

Dates:
September 28-30, Unconference sessions
October 1-2, Developer meetings

Place:
University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign
I Hotel and Conference Center

Registration/Fees:
Jasig Members: $225; Non-members: $275. Registration to begin next week.

Accommodations:
I Hotel and Conference Center: $119/night - Deadline for guaranteed rate is August 27, 2009.
Front Desk: 217 819 5000
Make sure you ask for the Jasig room block and rate!

What's an Unconference?

"An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is driven and created by the participants, generally day-by-day during the course of the event, rather than by a single organizer, or small group of organizers, in advance."
-Wikipedia

Jasig has always been about people coming together to share and learn in an open environment, and this is what an "unconference" is all about.

This fall event will provide both spontaneous and planned opportunities to collaborate on all Jasig community initiatives as well as initiatives from other community open source projects. This year we plan to continue discussions begun at the June Internet2/EDUCAUSE/Jasig Identity and Access Management ACAMP, as well.

Mark your calendar and make plans to join us! More information about the Unconference will be available soon.

What are we going to do?!

It's up to you. Ideas people are talking about so far include the following:

Lightning Talks - Volunteers talk for up to 8 minutes. Any topic goes.
Code Clinics - Bring your uPortal, portlet, CAS, Bedework, or IdM code or problem and work on it with core developers.
Birds of a Feather Sessions - Discuss common interests, issues, problems with colleagues.

Strategic Planning - What should Jasig be focused on next year? In three years? Join the conversation.
Newbie? Meet the experts and get individualized help.
How-to's. How-not-to's. Tips and techniques.

The final schedule will be determined in real-time, interactively with the attendees.

More information will be available soon. See you at the Unconference!

-The Fall 2009 Jasig Unconference Organizers

1.4 EDUCAUSE 2009 Annual Conference - Denver, Colorado (November 3-6, 2009)

"We are living in challenging times, when the need for uncommon thinking is unprecedented. You have told us you look to EDUCAUSE for insight, thought leadership, and community interaction. One event delivers all this, and more: the EDUCAUSE 2009 Annual Conference, where you will be able to tap into an expansive pool of the best thinking in higher education IT. Maximize the value of your travel dollars and join us November 3-6, 2009 in Denver, Colorado. We're offering the richest member-driven program ever, keenly focused on providing you with the kind of tangible value you can take back to campus and use all year long:

  • More perspectives and insight: lightning rounds built into every track.
  • More global viewpoints: a 100% increase in sessions featuring international speakers.
  • More diversity of opinion: increased numbers of sessions spotlighting multiple presenters.
  • More networking with a purpose: hundreds of discussion opportunities to facilitate future collaboration.
  • More focus on the most complex issues: cloud computing; emerging technologies; distributed, cooperative, and blended learning environments; the latest on P2P regulations; green and sustainable IT; and much more."

Reference: http://net.educause.edu/e09/

1.5 Kuali Days VIII Announced! - San Antonio, Texas (November 17 and 18, 2009)

"The Kuali Foundation is pleased to announce the dates and location for the Kuali Days VIII conference. Kuali Days VIII will be held on November 17 and 18, 2009 in San Antonio, TX. In addition to the Kuali Days VIII conference event, there will be pre-conference sessions, community meetings, and other networking activities.

Once again, there will be multiple tracks available to attendees. The Program Chair and Track Chairs are working diligently on putting together another excellent program. We are doing our best to hold down costs this year to address budget constraints, so we can maximize the ability for community members, project partners, and potential members to attend this event."

Source: kuali.org - http://www.kuali.org/news/2009/05142009.html

2 Jasig Project Updates

2.1 Central Authentication Service (CAS)

2.1.1 CAS Server

CAS Server 3.3.3 Release Announcement

We're pleased to announce the latest CAS server release, CAS Server 3.3.3, which contains a number of improvements and bug fixes:

Improvements:

  • Improved Exception Handling in NTLM/SPNEGO Handlers
  • Improved performance of JPATicketRegistry
  • Single Logout Performance Improvements
  • Attribute Authentication Method now able to be parsed without translation.
  • Updates to LdapServiceRegistryDao

New Features:

  • Brazilian Portuguese Translation

Bug Fixes

  • SAML Response Encoding
  • Null Pointer Exception when person not found with PersonDirectory
  • NTLM/SPNEGO Domain Removal Bug
  • Updated install.txt
  • JPA Ticket Registry not returning proxied instances
  • Image Corruption in Distribution
  • Incorrect default timeout for ThrottledSubmissionByIpAddress

Thanks to Daniel Cukier for the Portuguese translation and to Marvin Addison for his help with the performance improvements and testing.

Thanks to everyone else who submitted bug reports. The complete list of changes can be found here: http://www.ja-sig.org/issues/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10007&styleName=Html&version=10670

The latest release can be downloaded here: http://www.ja-sig.org/downloads/cas/cas-server-3.3.3-release.zip http://www.ja-sig.org/downloads/cas/cas-server-3.3.3-release.tar.gz

The jars, source files, and javadocs are also available in the Jasig Maven2 Repository.

NOTE: If you have modified the XML file that contains the list of argument extractors, you may need to update that XML file (see the default one for the changes). This is in support of more efficient Single Log Out.

4.x Branch Development
Work continues on the next generation CAS release. Recent additions to the CAS4 codebase include support for JPA, Memcached, and Memory-backed storage mechanisms, an overhauled UI Support for JPA, Memcached, and Memory-backed storage mechanisms have been completed.

You're invited to try out the code and provide feedback, suggestions, etc.

2.1.2 CAS Clients

phpCAS
phpCAS 1.1 RC1 has been released with multiple enhancements including support for the samlValidate, which would allow a phpCAS client to access the attributes returned in a SAML 1.1 response.

The release can be downloaded here: http://www.ja-sig.org/downloads/cas-clients/php/1.1.0RC1/

Java Client
Just a reminder, that the Jasig CAS Client for Java is available both in the public Maven Repositories, as well as on the Jasig Download Site: http://www.ja-sig.org/downloads/cas-clients/cas-client-3.1.6-release.zip

Maven users should use the following:
GroupID: org.jasig.cas
ArtifactId: cas-client-core
Version: 3.1.6
Type: jar

2.1.3 CAS Community Calls

Recent community calls involved discussions on potential incubation projects including a .NET client, ClearPass, and more. The steering committee will be looking into properly labeling available clients.

In addition, RFCs were discussed. RFC1, related to the removal of unique identifiers, seemed appropriate (separate question of whether there should be an RFC to remove all query string parameters). The second RFC, related to separating UI related elements from the CAS protocol had no opinions. The third RFC was related to locking down service urls. This seemed more of a feature of the CAS server then a protocol extension because the protocol would have to be changed for each protocol.

Community calls will be held on the second Wednesday of the month at 2PM Eastern, although we will confirm beforehand if there are discussion topics.

Scott Battaglia (Rutgers University), Lead Developer, Jasig Central Authentication Service

2.2 uPortal

2.2.1 uPortal Steering Committee Stakeholder Elections

The uPortal Steering Committee will be filling four stakeholder positions through elections held this Summer. If you are interested in serving as a community advocate for uPortal to help shape its growth, please nominate yourself using the instructions found elsewhere in this newsletter. The committee meets monthly by phone as well as in person at the conferences. This year the group will be undertaking an outreach initiative to proactively seek increased input from portal users, administrators, and managers. If you fell you can help speak as to how we might better address their needs, please consider running for a position on the committee.

2.2.2 uPortal 3.1 Technical Webinar

On May 21st, 2009, Unicon hosted a uPortal 3.1 Technical Webinar with Eric Dalquist, Developer at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and Lead Developer of the Jasig uPortal 3 project. This webinar was exceptionally popular in the community, with over 30 people in attendance.

This Technical Webinar educated viewers on:

  • What's new in uPortal 3.1
  • uPortal 3 features in production environments
  • Technical functionality of uPortal 3.1

To view the video of this webinar, please click the following link: http://www.unicon.net/node/1260

Unicon will be posting additional Upcoming Webinars shortly. Stay tuned for more Jasig related Webinars. To view Unicon's upcoming events, visit: http://www.unicon.net/company/news/events

2.2.3 Gettysburg Portals Conference Update

Jasig Executive Director Jonathan Markow and uPortal steering committee member Andrew Petro both had the pleasure of attending the Gettysburg College Portal 2009 conference. Jonathan gave an all-conference session on the future of the higher education portal and Andrew gave presentations on the portal as the user interface to a services-oriented architecture, on what's new in uPortal, and on open source options for single sign on (CAS and Shibboleth). The conference also featured a presentation on using Google Analytics and Jasig CAS with the uPortal-based Luminis IV portal product. Jasig's growing collection of free and open-source standards-compliant portlets were of interest both to uPortal adopters and to adopters of other portal platforms.

References:
Gettysburg College Portal 2009 http://cnav.gettysburg.edu/portal/portal09/
The Future of Higher Education Portals http://sites.google.com/site/portalconf2009/blog/jonathanmarkow-futureportal

3 Jasig Incubator

3.1 Notes from the Incubation Working Group

The Incubation Working Group (IWG) is reviewing 8 portlet projects in addition to Bedework, the ESUP Helpdesk, Open Registry and several smaller projects. This month, the IWG members will be elected and at least one new position filled. If you are interested in joining the IWG or know someone who is, please nominate them. In the next quarter, we will be establishing a quarterly review cycle and working with the board to adopt standard Jasig licensing practices. We hope to graduate our first fully sponsored project(s) in the Fall.

Susan Bramhall, on behalf of the Incubation Working Group

4 Around Jasig

4.1 Fluid Infusion 1.1 Release

The Fluid Project is very pleased to announce the release of Fluid Infusion 1.1

This release introduces a handful of new features and bug fixes to the framework and components, building on the solid foundation of our Infusion 1.0 release last month. Infusion 1.1 is an incremental upgrade and preserves backwards compatibility for all production-grade components.

Infusion 1.1 is available for download at: http://fluidproject.org/index.php/download-infusion

What's New in This Release?

  • Adds jQuery UI Themes for working with FSS themes
  • Adds new and powerful decorators for the Renderer:
    The "fluid" decorator instantiates any Fluid Infusion component bound to the markup
    New support for removing arbitrary attributes and CSS classes
  • Updates the Pager:
    Improved handing of column sorting
    Fixed persistence of focus
  • Updates the Uploader:
    User can manually switch to the standard non-Flash http file uploader
    Uploader Browse button now respects DOM z-index in Flash 10
  • Updates the User Interface Options:
    Better cross browser support
    Better keyboard and screen reader accessibility
  • Fixes many bugs

See the complete list here: http://issues.fluidproject.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=10203

If you're upgrading from Infusion 1.0, please see: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Upgrading+to+Infusion+1.1

If upgrading from an earlier version of Infusion you may want to refer to the following Upgrade guides: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Upgrading+to+Infusion+1.0

What is Fluid Infusion?

Fluid Infusion is a JavaScript application framework for building rich, reusable, and accessible user interfaces on the Web. It includes all the tools you need for building complex interactions, including support for models and views, data binding, and unobtrusive markup rendering. Infusion also includes a growing collection of components that have been designed by a cross-disciplinary team and thoroughly tested for usability and accessibility. By incorporating the Infusion framework and components into your web application's user interface, you will make your application easier to use by more people. Easier to use means happier users.

Known Issues

An up-to-date listing of known issues with this release is available at: http://issues.fluidproject.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=10189

Help us Build a Usable Web For Everyone

The Fluid Project is an open, collaborative community. Our goal is to improve the user experience of open source web applications, so if you are a designer or developer and want to help change the world, consider getting involved! Fluid Infusion includes not only full source code but also a design handbook that offers useful design, accessibility, and usability strategies and documentation, all backed by a growing community of interaction designers, user interface experts, and software developers contributing a wealth of expertise in usability and accessibility.

Many thanks to everyone in the community for their hard work and support for this release!

Eli Cochran
manager of user experience design
ETS, UC Berkeley

4.2 Four Major Universities Select Unicon for Open Source Support of Sakai, uPortal, and CAS

"Unicon, Inc., a leading provider of software consulting services and open source solutions for the education market, today announced that California State University, Sacramento, the University of Rhode Island, the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and Virginia Technical University have joined the Unicon Cooperative Support Program for the open source Sakai, uPortal, or CAS (Centralized Authentication Service) platforms. Unicon's Cooperative Support Program provides member institutions with a predictable cost support structure for their open source solutions along with a dedicated team of expert development and technical specialists that deliver direct support and assistance. The program includes scalable support options and discounts when multiple platforms are selected. All development work and fixes performed by the team for individual institutions are contributed back and shared with the respective open source communities. Unicon currently has over thirty colleges and universities enrolled in its Cooperative Support Program."

For the full announcement, visit: http://www.unicon.net/node/1264

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Jasig Newsletter - June 2009

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 jasig dot org.

The next issue of the monthly Jasig Newsletter will be published on or about July 21st, 2009. Articles for that edition of the newsletter should be submitted no later than Monday, July 20th, 2009. Thanks!

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