Newsletter - 200811 - November 2008

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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)

2.1 Central Authentication Service (CAS)
2.1.1 CAS Server 3.3.1
2.1.2 CAS Client for Java 3.1.4
2.1.3 OpenRegistry Update
2.2 uPortal
2.2.1 uPortal@EDUCAUSE
2.2.2 Deployed uPortals

3.1 JASIG Welcomes Its Newest Members
3.2 Webinar - Secure Web Applications with Central Authentication Service (CAS) - with Unicon's Adam Rybicki
3.3 University of Wisconsin-Madison Job Postings
3.4 Community Web Links

4.1 JASIG Community Profile: Colin Clark, University of Toronto, the Fluid Project - with Jonathan Markow, JASIG Executive Director

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

Call for Proposals now open
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Deadline for submission of proposals for regular one hour sessions:
December 1, 2008

Conference site: http://www.ja-sig.org/conferences/09spring/index.html

Dear Colleague:

The JASIG Conference Planning Committee is pleased to announce the Spring 2009 Conference to be held March 1-4 in Dallas, Texas.

Following the great success of last year's conference, we are partnering with our open source community colleagues to create a forum for collaboration and learning. Join your colleagues from Bedework, CAS, DSpace, Fedora, Fluid, Internet2, Kuali, Sakai, uPortal and other open source projects, and submit proposals for a pre-conference seminar, presentation, kiosk, BOF or poster session!

We welcome your contributions in the following areas:

Community Source Management/Governance
What are best practices for managing community source projects or their deployments on campus? For encouraging adoption? For gaining acceptance and campus buy-in? For engaging your community in the processes? Presentations for managers, team leaders, executives, planners and strategists.

Design and Development
For developers, architects, UX designers, testers. Presentations for people who build community source products, use them as a development framework or want to learn more about doing so. These are technical topics, tips and techniques, how-to's.

Deployment and Integration
Presentations for people who need to make applications work on campus: developers, content providers, team leaders, evangelists. In particular, we would like to highlight work that integrates community source projects within the enterprise infrastructure and with each other.

Multiple Audiences
Presentations that span multiple projects or audience types. Community source project introductions and overviews.

Half-day Supplementary Seminars will be held in the morning and afternoon on Sunday, March 1st as well as on Wednesday (March 4th) afternoon.

Proposals may be entered on the JASIG Conference Website. Proposals require a Title, an Abstract (under 500 words), a Presenter Profile, and some basic affiliation information. This year we are also asking proposal submitters to select tags that best describe their proposals from a list of recommended tags.

Submit your proposal directly at

http://www.ja-sig.org/jasigconf/call-form.jsp?conf_id=jasig15

or from the conference home page, where you can find all the details:

http://www.ja-sig.org/conferences/09spring/index.html

(Click the Call for Proposals link on the left).

We look forward to seeing you at "Higher Education Open Source Communities - Working Together"!

"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/

"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/

"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

We're pleased to announce the release of CAS Server 3.3.1. We've included the following bug fixes and enhancements:

Bugs:
1. Fixed Tomcat 6 incompatibility with default JSP pages
2. Improved REST support by conforming to 201 standard specification more closely
3. Upgrade to latest Spring 2.5.6 to fix bugs introduced in 2.5.5 that affected flow timeout
4. Wrong reference path being set for RESTful API
5. Fixed service schema generation to support Oracle (NOTE: this will require you to update the table being used to store attributes, even if you're not using Oracle!)
6. Fix for incorrect parsing of identifier from X.509 certificates
7. Fix for array index out of bound exceptions in SPNEGO support.

Enhancements
1. Implemented method to allow for deployers to support non-standard REST clients
2. Support for CA certs without pathlength
3. better support for accented characters
4. Use maven-enforcer plugin to determine required Maven version
5. Upgrade to Restlet 1.1.1
6. Updated INSTALL instructions
7. Provided predictable ordering of services pattern matching
8. Support for Multivalued attributes in Attribute model.
9. Configure MemCacheTicketRegistry to be synchronous to support cases where CAS is too fast

Thanks to everyone who submitted bug reports, patches, and fixes! You can download this from the standard location: http://www.ja-sig.org/products/cas/downloads/

JASIG has released the CAS Client for Java 3.1.4 which includes minor bug fixes and enhancements including:

Potential Memory Leak in Single Sign Out Filter
Allow redirection to error page if ticket validation failed.
AssertionThreadLocalFilter will also check request for Assertion.
CAS Client can be configured via JNDI
Redirect After Validation Enabled by Default
Pluggable Method for determining Gateway features

The latest release can be obtained from the public Maven2 repository.

Most of the information related to OpenRegistry has been migrated to the JASIG Wiki. Rutgers continues to hold local discussions around OpenRegistry and publishes all of those items into the wiki. We actively encourage others who are evaluating OpenRegistry to do the same.

JASIG has also offered OpenRegistry a number of mailing lists. Those lists are available now: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/Open+Registry+Project+Lists

uPortal was featured at the EDUCAUSE annual October conference:

JASIG participated in an "Innovation Showcase" along with Fedora, DSpace, Kuali, and Sakai, focusing on open source in higher education. Andrew Petro assisted by providing a uPortal demo in a breakout session.

A presentation and webinar titled "Integrate your Enterprise with uPortal" was presented at the Unicon booth on the exhibit floor by JASIG Executive Director Jonathan Markow.

The community maintains a list of Deployed uPortals on the wiki at:

http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/UPC/Deployed+uPortals

This is a tremendous help to others either looking to adopt or scale their own implementation and only takes a few minutes of your time. If you already have an entry, please take a moment to make sure it is up to date, and consider adding a contact so folks can reach out to you directly.

If you are not yet listed and have an implementation, including a prototype or a packaged implementation like SunGard Higher Education's Luminis or Unicon's Academus, you are highly encouraged to add your own entry.

Source: This is a rebroadcast of an earlier Newsletter request from the JASIG uPortal Board Liaison

JASIG would like to officially welcome our newest members:

IBM
University of Connecticut
Brigham Young University
Sacramento State University
Denison College

Thanks to all of you for your support!

Jonathan Markow
Executive Director

Date: Tuesday, November 25, 2009 (2:00 pm EST/1:00 pm CST/11:00 am PST)

"Discover the Capabilities of Central Authentication Service (CAS) Single Sign-On Technology

Central Authentication Service (CAS) is an authentication system originally created by Yale University to provide a trusted way for an application to authenticate a user. CAS single sign-on technology allows a user to enter his or her username and password only once in a given browser session and experience authentication to multiple participating applications without re-entering his or her password.

Discover how institutions can maximize results when adopting CAS.
Find out the additional features CAS offers beyond those typically available via a web single sign-on technology.
Learn about the various services Unicon offers for CAS."

For more information, visit the Unicon web site at: http://www.unicon.net/node/1119

Maybe you attended the latest JASIG Unconference at UW-Madison and found yourself thinking, "What a great place. I wish I could live here." You're in luck! The Division of Information Technology has job postings for a Software Testing Consultant (http://madison.craigslist.org/sof/908509140.html) and an Internet Application Developer (http://madison.craigslist.org/sof/907899691.html). Applications are due shortly but late applications may be considered.

See what's new with our partner communities! Visit the links below.

Bedework - http://www.bedework.org/bedework
DSpace - http://www.dspace.org
Fedora Commons - http://www.fedora.info
Fluid - http://fluidproject.org
Internet2 - http://www.internet2.edu
Kuali Foundation - http://kuali.org
Sakai Foundation - http://www.sakaiproject.org
Sun's "EduConnection" - https://www.educonnection.org/ecommunity/educonnection/landing1.page

This month's JASIG interview is with Colin Clark, a software architect at the University of Toronto's Adaptive Technology Resource Centre and technical lead of the Fluid Project. The Centre's mandate is to help ensure that emerging information technology is designed inclusively from the very beginning. All their work is collaborative and driven by open standards.  The Fluid Project creates software and design tools to help open source communities improve the usability and accessibility of their work. They build user interface components and a framework that are designed with user-centered techniques, built for flexibility and customization, and are thoroughly accessible.   Fluid has also created a collection of tools and resources to help with the design process. Their UX Toolkit provides advice on how to build the right interface for a particular context, tools to identify problem areas in a design, and low-cost techniques for testing your software with users.  In Colin's words: "I'm the technical lead for Fluid, so I spend most of my time working with our development and design team as they build new components and frameworks. I try to help provide the vision and shape for Fluid's architecture, making sure that our technology is relevant and useful to developers, designers, and ultimately the users of web-based applications."

A. We've helped to raise the profile of interaction design and accessibility within open source development, through a combination of education and example. We try to work with and mentor communities, while also building our own software that embody this approach to design and inclusion.  I think our Infusion framework is really starting to solve some of the tough problems when developing client-side user interfaces for portals. We've built code that is specifically designed for this environment, so our components play nice with other widgets and portlets running in the same page.  Some JavaScript UIs can be really hard to customize and change. There are tons of libraries and widgets out there, but they're often designed for a single purpose. If you need to do something a little different, you often have to crack open the code and rewrite it to suit your use case. In contrast, our components are built to be flexible. You can change the markup, you can configure them in lots of different ways, and they're easily styled.  Lastly, I think our involvement in the JavaScript accessibility standards process is pretty important. A year or two ago, it was impossible for most people who rely on assistive technology to use client-side UIs like those found in Facebook or Gmail. We've been working closely with the W3C, Mozilla, and the JavaScript toolkit communities to ensure that Web 2.0 is accessible for all, and things are getting a lot better.

A. We have close relationships with a handful of communities, which we affectionately dub our "best friend projects." In addition to JASIG, we work a lot with Sakai, ATutor, and Kuali Student. We've shared a lot of code and design ideas with the Sakai community over the past couple of years. The ATutor folks have been early adopters for us, integrating nearly every component as soon as we ship it.  That said, I think our relationship with JASIG is unique. There are a lot of talented leaders and contributors in this community, and they have welcomed us from the beginning. I love working on uPortal, and the product just gets stronger with every release.

A. Definitely. I think that most developers are genuinely interested in user experience issues, and they want to create software that people love to use. So Fluid tries to build on that natural enthusiasm, giving communities the tools they need to provide a rich experience for their users. We've seen a positive impact when we work alongside projects, and we have learned a lot in the process, too.  uPortal has been really amazing in this regard. There's clearly a real commitment to user experience throughout the whole community, and we're happy to help wherever we can.

A. It's something we're always striving to get better at. I think one of the keys to good cross-team and cross-project communication is to emphasize all the stuff that happens in between design and development. Justin and Anastasia, our QA and documentation leads, are often the ones who end up driving our collaborations across projects, because they are at the center of the whole development process.   I think there are lots of ways to continue the dialog and collaboration between folks in the uPortal and Fluid communities. If you're working on a new design for uPortal or a particular portlet, let us know what you're up to and how we can help. I'm really looking forward to contributing new Fluid components to uPortal, too. We've already got the Layout Reorderer integrated in the uPortal 3.1 branch, and we're planning a number of new components that I hope will also make an impact in uPortal. We're always looking for advice, feedback, and contributors.

A. Over the next few months, we're going to be totally focused on releasing Infusion 1.0 and getting our components into uPortal, Sakai, and other projects. After that, my goal is to grow a broader community of contributors who are designing their own Fluid components, using them in various applications, and helping to extend the platform. I hope that our customizable approach will encourage others to share their unique adaptations and styles of Fluid components with the community.   In the next three years, I would like to see us embrace the mobile environment. More and more people are carrying around smartphones, and the need for a well-designed user experience is even more important in this context. When you're on the go and trying to find that important piece of information on a site, you don't want to be distracted by a confusing or inaccessible interface. I hope that we will have the opportunity to build tools that make it easier to deliver a unique experience for both the desktop and mobile devices, without the need to write two completely separate applications.

A. Wow, thanks for asking! I'm a self-taught programmer, and I actually studied composition at York University here in Toronto. I've been writing music for small ensembles around town for awhile now, and I also poke around on the guitar. I've always struggled a bit to describe the style of music I write; it's a bit unusual. I'm interested in all kinds of music, from jazz to modern composition to folk music. All these influences make their way into my pieces, but usually in a more abstract way. I tend to write slow, quiet music that you might think of as being minimalist. A lot of my pieces have ended up as soundtracks for short art films, and it's been exciting to see them travel around the world to different film festivals.

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JASIG Newsletter - November 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 December 16th, 2008. Articles for that edition of the newsletter should be submitted no later than Monday, December 15th, 2008. Thanks!

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Newsletter - 200811 - November 2008

JASIG Newsletter - November 2008

1 Upcoming Events

2 JASIG Project Updates

3 Around JASIG

4 JASIG Community Profile

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 CAS

2.1.1 CAS Server 3.3.1

2.1.2 CAS Client for Java 3.1.4

2.1.3 OpenRegistry Update

2.2 uPortal

2.2.1 uPortal@EDUCAUSE

2.2.2 Deployed uPortals

3 Around JASIG

3.1 JASIG Welcomes Its Newest Members

3.2 Webinar - Secure Web Applications with Central Authentication Service (CAS) - with Unicon's Adam Rybicki

3.3 University of Wisconsin-Madison Job Postings

3.4 Community Web Links

4 JASIG Community Profile

4.1 JASIG Community Profile: Colin Clark, University of Toronto, the Fluid Project - with Jonathan Markow, JASIG Executive Director

Q. What do you believe have been the most significant contributions of the Fluid project so far?

Q. You and other Fluid staff have been fairly active in the JASIG community, attending conferences, participating on discussion lists. Do you have similar relationships with the other communities you have been involved with?

Q. Have you seen any changes in the communities with whom you've worked? Has there been increased consciousness of the importance of the user experience in open source applications?

Q. We've seen excellent dialog between developers and designers across the uPortal and Fluid projects. Do you have any thoughts about how to further promote those kinds of interactions?

Q. Where would you like to see Fluid go in the next year? In the next three years?

Q. The JASIG community is familiar with your skills in the visual realm, but you also have a history as a composer and musician. Can you tell us how you've made use of those talents?