Potential Newsletter Contribution - JA-SIG Related Sakai Conference Presentation

Presentation on potential Sakai integrations with and usages of JA-SIG software at the December 2007 Sakai conference in Newport Beach

At this month's Sakai conference in Newport Beach, California, Dan McCallum and Andrew Petro, both of Unicon, Inc., presented on their having investigated potential for re-use of and integration with JA-SIG software in the Sakai collaboration and learning environment. Andrew emphasizes that Dan deserves credit for the technical heavy lifting involved. The investigated integration, available via Sakai "contrib" shared source control, explores programmatic integration with JA-SIG CAS and JA-SIG PersonDirectory services. This is a level of integration beyond that normally afforded in Sakai's support for e.g. use of CAS single sign on.

The presentation was well-received and included mention of additional opportunities for using other JA-SIG software in Sakai, including the Groups and Permissions framework that plays an important role in many production uPortal instances today and has been refactored, primarily through the efforts of Columbia's Dan Ellentuck, to be available as a standalone library adoptable in projects beyond uPortal.