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1.1 Jasig Spring Conference - Dallas, Texas (March 1-4, 2009)
1.2 Jasig UK (April 22, 2009)
1.3 Open Repositories 2009 - Atlanta, Georgia (May 18-21, 2009)
1.4 JavaOne 2009 - San Francisco, California (June 2-5, 2009)

2.1 Central Authentication Service (CAS)
2.1.1 CAS4 Server Updates
2.1.2 New CAS Web Site
2.1.3 CAS Client
2.1.4 Mailing Lists
2.1.5 Conference
2.1.6 OpenRegistry
2.1.7 Recent CAS Deployers
2.2 uPortal
2.2.1 Meet the uPortal Steering Committee!
2.2.2 uPortal 3.0.3-RC1 Release Announcement
2.2.3 uPortal 3.1.0-RC1 Release Announcement
2.2.4 Invitation to Post uPortal 3 Implementation Plans
2.2.5 ERP-Portal Integration Project

3.1 Our New Web Site
3.2 Seventh Annual "ESUP-Day" Draws 150 Participants in Paris
3.3 Sun, DSpace, and Fedora Webinar Series
3.4 Fluid-uPortal Collaboration 2.0
3.5 Fluid Infusion 0.8 Released!
3.6 Unicon Presentations at Jasig Spring 2009 Conference

4.1 Continuous Integration at Jasig

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The Jasig Spring 2009 Conference will be held next week in Dallas. Once again, we have been working with our many colleagues in higher education community source, and have produced what we think is an exciting conference program.

The Jasig Spring 2009 Conference will provide an unprecedented opportunity to meet and learn from each other. We're hoping to see you there!

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

Following on from our meeting last summer, the next meeting of Jasig UK is scheduled for Wednesday 22 April 2009. It will be held at the National Science Learning Centre in York (http://www.sciencelearningcentres.org.uk/WebPortal.aspx?page=2) and Jonathan Markow the Executive Director of Jasig will be joining us.

Could everyone who wishes to attend the meeting please sign up on the participants page. As we did last time, I suggest we use the wiki to circulate ideas and thoughts about what would be of most value as topics for the meeting. Topics and offers of presentations can be added to the agenda page. This will start to define the structure of the meeting and suggest a start time and an end time.

Please note that attendance is free of charge.

Thanks
Robert

Robert Sherratt
Head of Systems Integration
eServices Integration Group
Academic Services
Brynmor Jones Library
University of Hull
HU6 7RX, UK

Member of Jasig Board of Directors

Tel. +44(0)1482 466834

"The 4th annual international Open Repositories Conference will be held May 18th - 21st, 2009 at the Georgia Institute of Technology Hotel and Conference Center and Global Learning Conference Center at Technology Square in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference will be hosted by the Georgia Tech Library and Information Center."

Source: https://or09.library.gatech.edu/

"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/

Work continues to progress on the CAS4 server development. The architecture is mostly in-place, with the CAS1&2 protocol essentially supported. Work has begun on the SAML2 support, but has been delayed to complete the Services Management tool support first. On the mailing list, we're currently gathering requirements for the Services Management tool. Feel free to join the conversation!

You may have noticed that there's a new Jasig web site! As part of that the CAS site has been updated. Its looking great! Going forward, this should make it easier to update. As we transition, there may be a few bumps, so please send any feedback to us.

We'd like to welcome Brad Cupit as a new committer to the Jasig CAS Client for Java. The first code that he commits should become available in the 3.1.16 release!

The CAS mailing lists have been migrated from Yale to Wisconsin, are are now hosted with the other Jasig lists. You can join our lists by visit here: http://www.jasig.org/cas/mailing-lists

Tons of content about CAS, Shibboleth, OpenRegistry, and other IdM related stuff! Time to meet with the CAS developers, and more!

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

Work continues on the Jasig pre-incubated OpenRegistry project. The team recently completed its first use case of adding a role to a person, and starts on their next use case. We also welcome, James Jones as a new committer from University of South Florida! Find out more information about the project here:

http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/OR/Home

Instructions to try out the demo use case: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/ORUM/Deploying+the+Demonstration+War+from+SVN

Clinical Trial Semantics Incorporated

Are you a new CAS deployer? An old deployer who hasn't contacted us? Let us know you've deployed CAS!

In addition to the many great sessions and seminars packed with portal-related content, the upcoming Jasig conference also gives you a chance to meeting with members of the uPortal Steering Committee. We have tentatively reserved the ad hoc meeting room from 10:00-11:00 on Wednesday. This is an informal opportunity for you to provide feedback face to face on the uPortal project. Stop by!

JA-SIG is proud to announce the first Release Candidate of uPortal 3.0.3. This release is the result feedback from the significant interest and use of the previous 3.0 releases and provides a feature-complete testing release prior to a 3.0.3 GA release.

This release includes the following new features and fixes along with 30 total resolved Jira issues:

Fix the impersonation filter breaking simple authentication
Resolve IE6 dynamic UI rendering issues
Enable anchor generation for portlet URLs
Multi-valued URL parameter support in portlet URLs
Significant import/export script performance improvements
Add JavaScript minification as part of the build

This release is ready for general use. If you do find any issues please file them in the JA-SIG Issue Tracker

I want to thank everyone who contributed to the development both directly and in-directly. Having this developer community available for both code and design insight has been invaluable.

Downloads are available from: http://www.ja-sig.org/downloads/uportal/uPortal-3.0.3-RC1/
Release notes are available at: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/UPC/3.0.3-RC1

uPortal 3 Release Engineer,
-Eric Dalquist

Jasig is proud to announce the first Release Candidate of uPortal 3.1.0. This release is feature complete and will be undergoing additional testing and bug fixes over the next three weeks before a final General Audience release is made. The uPortal 3.1 release includes many new features contributed back by uPortal 3.0 adopters along with the updates from nearly a year of production use. At this time parties interested in new uPortal deployments are encouraged to strongly consider starting with uPortal 3.1.

This release includes nearly 200 bug fixes, improvements and new features since uPortal 3.0. Some of these include:

Database backed portal events (statistics) storage thanks to University of Wisconsin - Madison UP-2075
Identity and Attribute swapper admin portlets thanks to University of Wisconsin - Madison UP-2114
DLM Fragment admin portlet that allows for easy switching to fragments and fine-grained permissioning thanks to Drew Wills & Unicon UP-2118
MANAGE permission to allow fine-grained delegated management of portal channels thanks to Chris Doyle & Johns Hopkins UP-2186
Long term cache headers & GZIP filtering for static portal content to allow for faster portal page loads thanks to Jen Bourey and Unicon UP-2293
Use of the Fluid Reorderer for the drag-and-drop UI customization in the portal thanks to the numerous Jasig and Fluid developers who made this happen.
Switched to the Fluid Skinning System for the default uPortal skin thanks to Gary Thompson and Unicon UP-2286
Switched to completely div based XHTML theme from mix of tables and divs thank to Gary Thompson and Unicon UP-2287

This release is intended to be feature complete. The only differences between it and the GA will just be fixing bugs. That said, there is always the possibility that a bug fix in a RC could cause incompatibility with the GA release.

Important Upgrading Note
uPortal 3.1.0 has had database changes that are incompatible with the 3.0 and 2.x releases. Upgrading to uPortal 3.1.0 will require using the crn-export scripts in your current install and then the crn-import scripts in your new uPortal 3.1.0 install. Pointing a uPortal 3.1.0 release at an older database will very likely not work and could cause database corruption.

Downloads are available from: http://www.ja-sig.org/downloads/uportal/uPortal-3.1.0-RC1/
Release notes are available at: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/UPC/3.1.0-RC1

uPortal 3 Release Engineer,
-Eric Dalquist

There have been a number of successful uPortal 3 implementations lately. If you have project plans that you are able to share with others, please post or link to them on the following page: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/x/64BpAQ

The nascent ERP-Portal Integration project had our first conference call on Feb. 10th. In preparation for the BOF session in Dallas, we're creating wiki and subversion space to showcase existing integration work, particularly relating to Banner. If you've done any kind of work to integrate your ERP and portal, feel free to snap some screen shots and add them to the gallery. Stay tuned to the ERP-Integration wiki for details - http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/x/YgReAQ.

As of Friday, February 13, 2009, Jasig has a new web site (www.jasig.org), a new logo, and a new name!

While "Jasig" is not a huge leap from "JA-SIG," it finally re-brands us in a way that, hopefully, reflects the changes we've been through since late 1999 when a few university technology leaders took advantage of an opportunity to work together in a way that would ultimately change the face of enterprise software for higher education.

Back in those days, JA-SIG stood for "Java in Administration - Special Interest Group." Our organization began, with generous assistance from Sun Microsystems, in the interests of sharing knowledge and collaborating around the emerging Java programming language. As projects such as uPortal and CAS grew out of our efforts and attracted world-wide attention and participation, we adopted new technologies, broke away from our "administration" tag, and eventually became "JA-SIG" (look familiar?), the "Java Architectures Special Interest Group."

As much as we still continue to ponder "Java Architectures," we soon realized that this was still a limiting name considering the much broader range of activities and concerns that we now pursue. In order to move forward without being pigeon-holed by our acronym, we've now discarded it—without completely abandoning the "Jasig" name, which conveys achievements and values that we continue to uphold.

As for the new web site design, we hope it accomplishes the goals we set out to achieve: to create a site that makes it easier for users to understand what Jasig is and does, to enable site users to find the information they are looking for, and to give us a vehicle for enhancing our communications with you.

On behalf of the Jasig Board,

Jonathan Markow
Executive Director

One hundred and fifty participants took in the 7th ESUP-Day conference held in Paris on February 3, 2009.

Some highlights from the conference, organized by the ESUP-Portail consortium, were:

Presentation of the new legal structure for the consortium and how member projects can attain consortium sponsorship;
Technical demonstrations of the new features of esup-helpdesk v3, the new ESUP-Portail Horde packaging with DIMP embedded, a redundant CAS implementation, and the new Nuxeo-based repository and document management system;
Collaboration with the ESCO-Portail project - a project similar to ESUP-Portail but focused on secondary schools. ESCO-Portail is based on the ESUP-uPortal distribution, and relies on Grouper for group management.

Further information on the 7th ESUP-Day event can be found at:  http://www.esup-portail.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=45449224

Sun Microsystems Inc. is working with the Fedora Commons and DSpace Foundation to deliver a series of seminars between February and the next Sun Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group (www.sun-pasig.org) meeting June 24-26 in Europe. Please note the information on the webinar below. Sun will be working on repository reference architectures with both organizations over the next several months.

All About Fedora *
The letters in Fedora's name stand for "Flexible, Extensible, Digital Object Repository Architecture," and also for the idea that it's core structure provides a robust, integrated, open source repository platform that enables storage, access and durable management of virtually any kind of digital content, "All Ways. Always." Most developers and repository managers like those terms, but what do they really mean? How do users get started with Fedora? Who else is using it? Where can users get hands-on help with planning and implementation?

Join Thornton Staples, Director of Community Strategy and Outreach, Fedora Commons for a 60 minute overview that explains what Fedora is, and offers advice on the nuts and bolts of getting started.

Date: 3/18/09
Time: 9amPT
Pre-registration is required: http://www.education-webevents.com/

The Fluid and uPortal communities have both benefited from nearly two years of successful collaboration on user experience issues. Fluid technology such as the Skinning System and Reorderer has been integrated into uPortal 3.1, and we've got lots more code and resources to share over the next few months.
Given the success of our collaboration so far, we'd like to make sure our communities continue to work together into the future. We'd love to continue working with the uPortal community on deliverables that directly add value to upcoming uPortal releases, and to help build reusable components that have been uniquely designed with uPortal's needs in mind.

We're open to ideas and suggestions for specific projects. After talking with a few community members so far, a couple of areas come to mind: improving the out-of-box experience of uPortal's administration tools; and adding robust accessibility support to uPortal. Indeed, these are areas our communities have already started to work on.

A uPortal/Fluid collaboration could help make a significant impact on uPortal's out-of-box experience, particularly for evaluators and new adopters when they first install and configure the application. At the moment, uPortal's administration tools are fairly complex and intimidating for new users, and they may serve as a barrier to adoption and wider usage. If an administrator can't successfully and easily get their uPortal instance up and running, they may be reticent to pass on this experience to their wider user base. Reworking the design and implementation of the administration user experience from the ground up could be very fruitful, making it easier for users to configure portlets, groups, and permissions. Encapsulating reusable functionality in Fluid components would allow other portlet developers to embed shared functionality, such as assigning users to groups, within their own context. Fluid can help throughout the process, from interaction designs and wireframes through implementation and testing.

Ultimately, there's a secondary benefit to refreshing and redesigning the administration tools, especially if we build sharable components during the process. At the moment, there are scarce examples of best practices for portlet authors in terms of design decisions, technology choices, and implementation techniques. New administration tools would provide us with a showcase to share with other portlet developers, providing them with hands-on examples for how to write a great portlet for uPortal.

Another area ripe for Fluid/uPortal collaboration is accessibility. Fluid and uPortal share a common philosophy in terms of personalization, allowing users to customize the information and experience provided by the application. Collaboration on accessibility support for uPortal would allow us to have a more robust system for ensuring compliance with the ADA and other international accessibility standards. Going beyond just compliance, we can apply the personalization philosophy of uPortal to accessibility, giving users the ability to reskin, restyle, and adapt the portal layout and appearance based on their personal needs and preferences. This would involve a number of specific deliverables:

Improving the markup, stylesheets, and JavaScript used by the portal to make it conform to modern WCAG 2.0 guidelines
Integrating Fluid's TransformAble services into the portal, providing a system for adapting the look and feel of uPortal based on user preferences
Providing examples and tutorials for portal developers on how to support accessibility in their own portals

Colin Clark, University of Toronto
Technical Lead, Fluid Project

The Fluid Project is pleased to announce the final release of Fluid Infusion 0.8, a new release featuring our first production release of the Fluid Skinning System, a preview of User Interface Options, and many bug fixes.

This is the last major release before Fluid 1.0. Coming in March.

Please see What's New in This Release below for more details.

Infusion 0.8 is available for download at:

http://fluidproject.org/index.php/download-infusion

What's New in This Release?

Uploader now supports all A-Grade browsers with both Flash 9 and 10
Improved documentation
Fluid Skinning System
Preview of User Interface Options
Upgrade to the latest version of qUnit automated Javascript test harness
Many bug fixes

See the complete list here: http://issues.fluidproject.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=10179

What is Fluid Infusion?

Fluid Infusion is a collection of rich, reusable, accessible user interface components built for the Web. These components have been designed by a cross-disciplinary team and thoroughly tested for usability and accessibility. By incorporating Fluid 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=10178

Help us Build a Usable Web For Everyone

The Fluid Project is an open, collaborative development project. Our goal is to improve the user experience of community source web applications, so if you are a designer or developer and want to help change the world, consider getting involved! The Fluid component library includes not only full source code but also a designer's toolkit 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!

Colin Clark
Technical Lead, Fluid Project
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto http://fluidproject.org

Source: jasig-ue list

"Unicon, Inc., the leading provider of open source software consulting services for the education market, will be presenting and participating in a total of nineteen technical seminars and presentations at the upcoming 18th Annual Jasig Spring 2009 Conference being held in Dallas, Texas, March 1-4, 2009. This year's conference, themed as "Higher Education Open Source Communities: Working Together!" promises to be the premier open source event for higher education in 2009 with participation by leading open source communities such as CAS, DSpace, Fedora, Fluid, Internet2 Middleware, Kuali, Sakai, and uPortal. Eight Unicon associates, including Vice President of Higher Education Services John Lewis and Vice President of Engineering Adam Rybicki, will deliver presentations on a variety of subjects pertaining to open source application deployment, development, and support for the online campus. Representatives from the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois will co-present with Unicon for three of the presentations."

Check out the complete entry at: http://www.unicon.net/node/1176

We've started building CAS4 using Bamboo for Trunk Integration Builds: http://developer.jasig.org/bamboo/browse/CAS4

In addition, on each trunk build, we're also generating the Maven2 site: http://developer.jasig.org/projects/cas4/

We now have continuous integration builds for both the trunk and 3.0-patches branches: http://developer.jasig.org/bamboo/browse/UP
We also plan to have email notification to the developers list for build and test failures.

Contributed by:
Scott Battaglia (Rutgers University), Lead Developer, Jasig Central Authentication Service, and
Eric Dalquist (University of Wisconsin - Madison) uPortal 3 Release Engineer

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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 March 17th, 2009. Articles for that edition of the newsletter should be submitted no later than Monday, March 16th, 2009. Thanks!

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