Newsletter - 200907 - July 2009

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1.1 Jasig Fall 2009 Unconference - Champaign, Illinois (September 28 - October 2, 2009)
1.2 EDUCAUSE 2009 Annual Conference - Denver, Colorado (November 3-6, 2009)
1.3 Kuali Days VIII Announced! - San Antonio, Texas (November 17 and 18, 2009)

2.1 Central Authentication Service (CAS)
2.1.1 CAS Server 3.3.3 Final Released
2.1.2 OpenRegistry
2.2 uPortal
2.2.1 ERP Integration update
2.2.2 Call for Continuous Testing Input
2.2.3 Developer days opportunities at the Unconference

3.1 Jasig Election Results
3.2 Four Major Universities Select Unicon for Open Source Support of Sakai, uPortal, and CAS
3.3 Open Source Leaders Collaborate on Identity Management Issues at Advanced CAMP in Philadelphia

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REGISTER NOW FOR THE JASIG FALL 2009 UNCONFERENCE at UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Registration fee for the September 2009 Jasig Unconference: $225/Members, $275/Non-Members
Nightly rate at the iHotel and Conference Center: $119
Two-and-a-half days talking, learning, teaching, planning, designing, coding,
and hanging out with your peers: Priceless!

NEW INFORMATION: HOW TO REGISTER!

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

PLACE:
University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign
iHotel and Conference Center

REGISTRATION FEE:
$225 - Jasig Members
$275 - Non-Members
(Includes Breakfast, Mon/Tue Lunch, and Snacks)
Register here: https://www.concentra-cms.com/register/start.action?confId=43

ACCOMMODATIONS
iHotel and Conference Center
1900 South First Street, Champaign, IL 61820
$119/single/night
217.819.5000
Register online: www.stayatthei.com
Make sure you enter the Jasig attendee code to get the special rate: AJSG

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.
Workshops - Bring your uPortal, portlet, CAS, Bedework, or IdM code or design or requirements and work on them 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.

SOUNDS LIKE AN OFFER I CAN'T REFUSE. WHAT SHOULD I DO NEXT?

If you're planning to join us, please do the following:

1. Register for the Unconference right here:
https://www.concentra-cms.com/register/start.action?confId=43
2. Visit and Add your Name on the Unconference Planning Site on
the Jasig wiki. This is a great place to indicate your
interests---what you'd like to discuss, learn, share or teach:
http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/x/O4eUAQ
3. Reserve a room online at the iHotel and Conference Center:
Register online by August 27th: http://www.stayatthei.com
Make sure you enter the Jasig attendee code to get the group rate: AJSG
More info can be found here: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/x/QYeUAQ
4. Make travel arrangements. Tips are available here:
http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/x/QoeUAQ

See you at the Jasig Unconference,
The Fall 2009 Unconference Organizers

"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/
Latest: http://educause.informz.net/educause/archives/archive_374256.html
Podcast: http://www.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/PodcastFirstLookattheEDUCAUSE2/173425

"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

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:

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.

Development continues on the OpenRegistry project. Current development efforts include the Split/Join Use Case for Help Desk employees to fix possible errors in calculation of people. In addition, development has started on the Security component of the project. Authentication and Authorization are being implemented via a combination of Spring Security and custom domain authorization code. Authorization information is being designed such that it can be applied to downstream systems such as LDAP servers.

The project continues to be interested in feedback on our use cases: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/OR/Functional+Use+Cases

Feel free to join our development mailing list: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/OpenRegistry+Project+Lists

In the past month there has been increased interest in creating a suite of ERP integration portlets for SunGard's Banner applications. A number of institutions will be discussing this topic at the Jasig 2009 Unconference at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Please consult the Unconference wiki page for more information about the event: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/x/aIaUAQ

The uPortal project is seeking input and looking for volunteers to help with testing. To start out, we are interested in hearing ideas from you about expanding on and improving the uPortal testing process in all phases. Please input your suggestions on a new wiki page created for this purpose: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/x/xomUAQ.

Do you use uPortal or portlets developed by Jasig members? Have you run into a bug or other issue that requires some digging into the code? Would you like to get some pointers on where to start and how to go about fixing bugs or enhancing Jasig software? Bring your favorite issues to the Developer Days following the Jasig Unconference. Core developers from uPortal and other Jasig projects will be sticking around to help get people familiar with the best approaches for finding bugs, addressing issues and getting changes incorporated back into Jasig projects.

There are no additional registration fees for Developer Days. Breakfast and lunch are provided.

Contributed by: The uPortal Steering Committee

This summer's annual Jasig elections are over. Here are the results of the voting:

Board of Directors

Tim Archer (University of St. Francis)
Aaron Godert (Cornell University)
Jens Haeusser (University of British Columbia)
Jim Helwig (University of Wisconsin - Madison)

CAS Steering Committee
Stakeholders:

Eric Pierce (University of South Florida) (2nd term)
Andrew Feller (Louisiana State University)
Andrew Petro (Unicon)
Developer Rep: Scott Battaglia
Benn Oshrin from Rutgers will continue as Board Liaison

uPortal Steering Committee
Stakeholders:

Erik Olsson (University of California - Irvine)
Dwight Raum (The Johns Hopkins University)
Developer Reps:
Jen Bourey (Unicon)
Eric Dalquist (University of Wisconsin - Madison)
Jim Helwig from UW-Madison will continue as Board Liaison

Incubation Committee

Tim Carroll (University of Illinois - Urbana/Champaign)
Parker Grimes (Southern Utah University)
Cris Holdorph (Unicon)
Tuyhang Ly (Rutgers University)
Susan Bramhall from Yale University will continue as Board Liaison

Special thanks to this year's election committee: David Koehler, Cornell University and Debbie Smith, CONCENTRA-CMS.

Congratulations to those who will begin their terms this September 1st.
Many thanks to outgoing committee and board members for their service to Jasig.
Continuous thanks to our returning committee and board members, who do so much to keep the wheels turning!

Jonathan Markow
Executive Director

Phoenix, AZ - June 30 2009 —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 Tech have joined Unicon's Cooperative Support Program for the open source Sakai, uPortal, or CAS (Central 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 30 colleges and universities enrolled in its Cooperative Support Program.

"Unicon's Cooperative Support Program is a 'must have' for our institution and we would not be running our open source solutions of Sakai and uPortal without having a commercial support provider," said Duran Goodyear, Web Developer and Portal Administrator, University of the Arts. "We know Unicon can handle any issues that might potentially arise."

"Having Unicon and its Cooperative Support Program were big reasons we felt comfortable deploying Sakai," stated Trisha Gordon, Sakai Project Lead, University of Virginia. "The program is great. It enables our institution to be actively involved in future enhancements for Sakai through our voting as a program member."

"We deployed uPortal as our campus-wide portal in 2007 and immediately saw strong value and benefits to joining Unicon's Cooperative Support Program," said Paul Gullette, Web Application Programmer, University of Louisiana at Monroe. "Having their team of uPortal experts available for any potential emergencies and routine technical assistance gave us an extra level of confidence to move forward with this open source solution."

Since 1993, Unicon's consulting group has provided over 175 colleges and universities with software consulting, support, and related services for their online campus deployments.

Courtesy of: Unicon, Inc.
Source: http://www.unicon.net/node/1264

June 29, 2009 - At the Advanced Campus Architecture Middleware Planning (CAMP) workshop held in Philadelphia on June 18-19, open source software developers and campus deployers met to forge a collaborative approach to address common Identity and Access Management (IAM) issues.

IAM ensures that the right people access the right online services; it addresses how individuals and groups are identified and authorized within and across computer networks. It is a common requirement for all online applications, and is one of the first integration tasks that sites undertake when deploying a new software package or engaging an outsourced service. IAM requirements in academia are shifting as campuses collaborate, economize, outsource, federate, and standardize. In this changing environment, software projects and vendors get mixed messages about how to support IAM and campus deployers find that each new package or service brings a new integration challenge.

According to R.L. "Bob" Morgan, Chair of the Middleware Architecture Committee for Education (MACE), "This Advanced CAMP aimed to define and refine IAM requirements, improve channels for collaboration among community source projects, and increase the alignment of complementary work."

Supported by EDUCAUSE, Internet2, and Jasig, the workshop included representation from fourteen open-source projects and participants from Brazil, Columbia, Canada and France. Program committee member and Jasig executive director Jonathan Markow explained that the program committee set the tone with its diverse makeup, including representatives from Internet2, Kuali, CAS and Open Repository Projects.

"What's unique about this event is that we had a combination of leaders representing the key open source applications and an unprecedented opportunity for them to collaborate," commented Markow. For the full list of community and open source participants, see http://net.educause.edu/Program/1021815 .

In implementing several community source applications, campuses sometimes find that each one brings a new integration challenge. Aligning approaches to identity services helps shorten the time to production and reduces the complexity involved in deployment. It often simplifies the experience for the user also.

"This Advanced CAMP brought together identity management experts and open-source projects practitioners who depend on identity management services," said Gary Schwarz, who presented to the group on the Bedework open-source, enterprise calendar system, for which he is the Project Manager. "It's an exceptional opportunity to have an interactive conversation on providing services to organizations in the way they need them." The group focused on establishing common standards and interfaces that will benefit the entire community.

In addition to aligning identity approaches, attendees also explored the next challenges. "I hope to get out of the conference a shared effort on federated authorization," commented Ray Davis of U. C. Berkeley, a key contributor to the Sakai Project. Federated identity refers to the shared authentication and authorization among multiple trusted sources and services.

For more information on the Advanced CAMP, visit http://net.educause.edu/camp093 . The Advanced CAMP was sponsored by EDUCAUSE, Internet2, and Jasig. Additional support was provided by National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement OCI-0330626. There was also sponsorship from Unicon, Internet Society, and Kantara Initiative.

Courtesy of: Internet2 at internet2 dot org
Full Release: https://mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/i2-news/2009-06/msg00003.html

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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 August 18th, 2009. Articles for that edition of the newsletter should be submitted no later than Monday, August 17th, 2009. Thanks!

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Newsletter - 200907 - July 2009

Jasig Newsletter - July 2009

1 Upcoming Events

2 Jasig Project Updates

3 Around Jasig

1 Upcoming Events

1.1 Jasig Fall 2009 Unconference - Champaign, Illinois

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

1.3 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 3.3.3 Final Released

2.1.2 OpenRegistry

2.2 uPortal

2.2.1 ERP Integration update

2.2.2 Call for Continuous Testing Input

2.2.3 Developer Days opportunities at the Unconference

3 Around Jasig

3.1 Jasig Election Results

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

3.3 Open Source Leaders Collaborate on Identity Management Issues at Advanced CAMP in Philadelphia

Jasig Newsletter - July 2009