Newsletter - 200708 - August 2007

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JA-SIG Newsletter - August 2007
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1 Welcome
1.1 Editor's Message

2 Call for Volunteers
2.1 CAS - Site Web Master

3 Project Updates
3.1 CAS
3.1.1 CAS Server 3.1 Released
3.1.2 New CAS Clients
3.1.3 Welcome to the new Documentation Coordinator
3.2 uPortal
3.2.1 uPortal - News and Announcements
3.2.2 uPortal Strategy

4 Community News and Events
4.1 JA-SIG BarCamp 2007 (The Winter Unconference)

5 From the Lists
5.1 Netbeans users rejoice!

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1 Welcome

1.1 Editor's Message

Welcome to the August 2007 issue of the JA-SIG Newsletter.

One might be excused for thinking that the summer should be a time of rest and relaxation, but that obviously isn't the case for those working on the various JA-SIG projects. There are some very significant updates and announcements this month with, I am sure, more to come next month.

Others are busy too, as evidenced by the number of problems that get reported and subsequently resolved through correspondence on the lists. I find the level of active support on the lists to be absolutely amazing. Thanks to all those who participate in the lively discussions there.

Hope you enjoy this month's content!
Mark Rogers, Editor, JA-SIG Newsletter

2 Call for Volunteers

2.1 CAS - Site Web Master

Site Web Master
The CAS team currently maintains a web site in HyperContent (content management system) geared towards marketing information related to the CAS product. This includes news, downloads, community information, deployers, high level production information, and links to other various resources. The site is located at http://www.ja-sig.org/products/cas/

The person in charge for the web site would be responsible for ensuring that all content is up-to-date. They would also be responsible for working on the transitition of any remaining documentation from the web site to the wiki's user manuals. Site Web Master can choose to use whichever content-management system they are comfortable with as long as there is not a loss of features related to the site. Major design changes or shifts will be discussed with development team.

Estimated Effort per Month: 2 - 7 hours

The first task of the Site Web Master will be to update the Team listing (wink)

Contact: Scott Battaglia <scott.battaglia@gmail.com>

3 Project Updates

3.1 CAS

3.1.1 CAS Server 3.1 Released

We're pleased to announce the general audience release of CAS Server 3.1. CAS Server 3.1 is the culmination of about seven and a half months of blood, sweat and tears for the development team. This release is a combination of bug fixes, refinements, enhancements, and major new features.

While the minor bug fixes, refinements and enhancements are detailed in our Change Log <http://www.ja-sig.org/issues/secure/BrowseProject.jspa?id=10007&subset=-1 >, here's a list of some of the major new features:

  • Requires Java 5
  • Additional Authentication Handlers: SPNEGO, NTLM, RADIUS
  • Built using Maven 2
  • Improved Internationalization: German, Chinese, Japanese, and Swedish
  • Optional Services Management Application (including Pseudo-anonymous support)
  • Support for Google Apps for Education / Integration with Google Accounts
  • Support for SAML 1.1 (attribute passing)
  • Support for Attributes / Integration with JA-SIG PersonDirectory
  • OpenID Identity Provider
  • Introduction of Single Sign Out protocol (currently, no client support)
  • Additional Ticket Registries: BerkeleyDB and JBoss Cache

Thanks go out to the CAS development team (Marc-Antoine Garrigue, Arnaud Lesueur and Jan Van der Velpen) as well as the many contributors who have supplied ideas, patches, documentation, etc. (William Thompson, Adam Rybicki, Stephen More, Andres March, Marvin S. Addison, Julien Marchal, Andrew Petro, David D. Kilzer, Frank Taffelt, John Thiltges, Julien Henry, Matt Smith, Eric Dalquist, and Ray Tsang)

The release can be downloaded from our Downloads Page <http://www.ja-sig.org/products/cas/downloads/>

Please download it and try it out. Please report any issues or enhancement requests to our JIRA instance <http://www.ja-sig.org/issues>

Documentation can be found in the CAS User Manual <http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/CASUM/Home>

3.1.2 New CAS Clients

The phpCAS CAS client is now a JA-SIG Project.

Pascal Aubry and ESUP-Portail have donated the phpCAS CAS client to JA-SIG. Its now being maintained within the JA-SIG infrastructure:

Please welcome Pascal Aubry as a new CAS Client developer.

New mod_auth_cas CAS client project

Phillip Ames from the University of Connecticut has donated their mod_auth_cas CAS client to the JA-SIG project. Phillip has been actively developing and cutting releases based on feedback from the JA-SIG community. The mod_auth_cas client is also being hosted within the JA-SIG infrastructure:

Please welcome Phillip Ames as a new CAS client developer.

If you have a CAS client you'd like to donate to JA-SIG, please contact Scott Battaglia <scott.battaglia@gmail.com >. CAS clients donated to JA-SIG gain access to the JA-SIG infrastructure as well as a larger audience of potential contributors and testers.

3.1.3 Welcome to the new CAS Documentation Coordinator

Harry Ng, the IT Officer of the Faculty of Education in the University of Hong Kong, has volunteered to help us out. At the University, his major duties are application development and administration and he is responsible for the CAS deployment there.

Harry will be maintaining our wiki presence which includes the more general CAS space, the CAS User Manual, and the CAS Clients section. He'll be monitoring the lists for new content and either adding it himself or soliciting the community ( i.e. you guys) to help him out from time to time. Hopefully with the addition of Harry, we'll be able to keep up with the flow of documentation (note, that he'll probably take a short while to become acclimated with the documentation so don't expect miracles tomorrow (wink)).

If you have ideas or some extra cycles to help Harry out, please contact him on the CAS lists. Though Harry is responsible for the documentation sections, he won't be able to do everything himself (as there will be parts of the systems he will be unfamiliar with). So lend a hand if you can!

Thanks and welcome, Harry!

Contributed by:
Scott Battaglia (Rutgers University), Lead Developer, JA-SIG Central Authentication Service

3.2 uPortal

3.2.1 uPortal - News and Announcements

Since the previous newsletter, uPortal released the much-awaited general-audience uPortal 2.6.0, available for download from the uPortal downloads page. This GA release includes continued enhancements and corrections to the new drag and drop user preferences available for default theme, thanks to the continued work of Jen Bourey of Yale University, and to JSR-168 support, thanks to the efforts of Eric Dalquist (UW-Madison). Special thanks are due to Eric Dalquist for cutting a decisive swath through remaining nagging issues, making way for this release.

The uPortal project especially acknowledges the efforts of Nick Bolton (Unicon) and Susan Bramhall (Yale) in helping the project to address recent issues.

uPortal is pleased to welcome several new committers this month: Timothy Carroll and Andy Gherna of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Lennard Fuller of Unicon, Inc.. Timothy and Andy have been involved in uPortal for quite some time, submitting issues, patches, and recently applying heavy lifting on improving JSR-168 support in uPortal. Lennard has spoken at prior JA-SIG conferences on a variety of topics, most recently on topics related to his ongoing work with Pearson Education's uPortal project. Adding Lennard as a project committer is hoped to help uPortal to better avail itself of the opportunities for improvement unearthed by Pearson's very-high-load project.

At the direction of the JA-SIG Board of Directors, the uPortal project is instituting a project steering committee. Members of this committee are appointed by the Board, elected by the JA-SIG membership, or elected by the uPortal developers. While the election is not yet complete, there appears to be clear consensus among the uPortal developers to select Eric Dalquist (UW-Madison) and Andrew Petro (Unicon) to represent uPortal developers on the committee.

These new committers and steering committee are coming on board at an especially exciting time for uPortal: with the release of uPortal 2.6.0 and creation of a 2-6-patches maintenance branch, uPortal HEAD will be progressing towards a near-term, continued-evolution, yet aggressively enhanced release, delivering on the uPortal 3 premise, as discussed at the Denver uPortal developer lunch and Bar Camp, on the uPortal developer email list, and recently on the uPortal discussion email list. Much progress is already available in an exploration branch on the first technology deliverable on the roadmap, a Maven 2 uPortal build process.

Andrew Petro (Unicon, Inc.),
uPortal 2.6 Release Engineer

3.2.2 uPortal Strategy

uPortal Community,

uPortal is the EDUCAUSE Catalyst Award winning, open source Enterprise Portal Framework built for, and by, higher education. It is also a largeand growing international community of contributors, implementors, and commercial partners, with ongoing relationships with like minded communities such as Sakai, Kuali, and Fluid. Finally, uPortal is a JASIG project. Strategic direction is guided and supported by the membership of JASIG.

It is with this in mind that the development community is looking for feedback on the proposed common path forward for the much anticipated uPortal3 release. The ultimate goal is a uPortal3 GA release ready for production deployment by Winter 2007 that meets the community goals for a next generation Enterprise Portal Platform and leverages the best of
uPortal2.

The common path forward provides a platform for evolution & innovation based on a modern software architecture, thus achieving the original goals of uPortal3, while leveraging as much as possible the production tested, scalable, award winning, rock solid uPortal2 code base.

A draft of the Community Goals and Technical Deliverables for uPortal3 GA Winter 2007 is now available in the wiki at:

http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/UP3/uPortal3+Community+Goals+and+Objectives

This draft represents current developer consensus, but needs wider community discussion and by-in before it can become an actionable plan.

Looking forward to your thoughts, comments, and suggestions.

Cheers,
Bill

Contributed by:
Bill Thompson (Rutgers University), JA-SIG uPortal Board Liaison

4 Community News and Events

4.1 JASIG BarCamp 2007 (The Winter Unconference)

JASIG Community,

JASIG has always been about people coming together to share and learn in an open environment, and this is what a BarCamp is all about. As demonstrated by the success of the Summer 2007 Conference mini BarCamp, the "unconference" format fits very well with our community values and goals. This year the JASIG Winter Conference will be held as a BarCamp instead of the traditional conference format. This event will provide opportunities to collaborate on all JASIG community initiatives. There will not be a separate Winter Conference or Fall uPortal Developer Meeting.

What happens at BarCamp?

  • stakeholders create project road maps
  • developers discuss, design, and develop
  • implementers share tips, strategies
  • designers discuss techniques
  • members chart out strategic direction

We are in the very early stages of organizing this new exciting event and need your help.

1) Please RSVP
Registration fees will be kept as low as possible and potentially zero. If you think you might attend please RSVP. This will help us ensure we have adequate meeting space and food.
RSVP @ http://opensource.meetup.com/74/calendar/6047091/

2) When is the best time for the BarCamp?
There are always a number of events happening throughout the year. Please help us determine the best time to have the BarCamp.
Poll @ http://opensource.meetup.com/74/polls/85910/

3) Potential Hosts
We are looking for JASIG Member institutions to volunteer as potential sites for the BarCamp. If you are interested in hosting the BarCamp at your institution please let me know.

Best Regards,
Bill Thompson, JA-SIG uPortal Board Liaison

5 From the Lists

5.1 Netbeans users rejoice!

From Andy Gherna, University of Illinois - CITES, Sr. Research Programmer, and new uPortal committer, as posted on uportal-dev:

"When uPortal 2.6.0 was released, we began to experience a problem with Netbeans 5.5(.1). For some reason Xalan 2.7.0 was not found on the classpath when uPortal started in the version of Tomcat that comes bundled with Netbeans even though the build copied xalan-2-7-0.jar in to the correct location ($CATALINA_HOME/common/endorsed). The problem originally occurred on Mac OS X but was reproduced in Windows XP. I have found and documented a work-around that allows you to continue using Netbeans with Tomcat and uPortal.

Andrew Petro started a page on the wiki called "2.6.0 Additional Release Notes" that was intended to supplement the release notes. I have added the work-around to this page. If you are interested, please see http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/x/vwNl. Thanks."

Thank YOU Andy and Andrew!

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JA-SIG Newsletter - August 2007

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

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

The next JA-SIG Newsletter will be published on September 15, 2007. Articles for that edition of the newsletter should be submitted no later than September 13, 2007.

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