uPortal IRC Logs-2008-01-04

[08:32:07 EST(-0500)] * jayshao (n=jayshao@jayshao.oirt.rutgers.edu) has joined ##uportal
[09:44:14 EST(-0500)] * esm (n=esm@asdf.dkc.jhu.edu) has joined ##uportal
[10:20:27 EST(-0500)] * EricDalquist (n=dalquist@bohemia.doit.wisc.edu) has joined ##uportal
[12:01:50 EST(-0500)] * awills (n=awills@uni1.unicon.net) has joined ##uportal
[15:20:12 EST(-0500)] <jayshao> KWhat_Work did you get an answer to your dependency question?
[15:55:05 EST(-0500)] * esm (n=esm@asdf.dkc.jhu.edu) has joined ##uportal
[16:09:15 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> oi ... the sooner you rewrite CError the better jayshao
[16:17:27 EST(-0500)] <jayshao> heh – how goes it?
[16:17:41 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> good actually
[16:17:49 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> portlet rendering and actions completely work
[16:18:02 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> I'm cleaning up CError to reduce some duplicate code
[16:18:22 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> the renderXML and renderCharacters methods are pretty much clones of each other
[16:18:43 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> I have a functional test portlet I'm flushing out to include
[16:18:52 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> there are some pluto bugs I still need to track down
[16:25:46 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> jayshao: no, although i have guessed
[16:26:18 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> so far i think i need tomcat, ant and some type of database?
[16:26:36 EST(-0500)] <jayshao> KWhat_Work what version are you trying to build?
[16:26:43 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> latest stable
[16:26:49 EST(-0500)] <jayshao> 2.6.1?
[16:26:52 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> 2.6?
[16:26:55 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> usj
[16:26:57 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> yah think so
[16:27:27 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> yup 2.6.1
[16:27:43 EST(-0500)] <jayshao> then I would recommend: jdk 1.5, tomcat 5.5, ant, and a db (if you don't want to use the bundled hsql)
[16:28:08 EST(-0500)] <jayshao> and IDE is helpful, Eclipse is far and away the most common
[16:28:28 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> probably mysql or postgre
[16:29:19 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> jayshao: anyone tested this with tomcat 6?
[16:29:38 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> KWhat_Work: uPortal works but the scripts are setup to deploy to tomcat 5.5
[16:29:46 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> k
[16:29:46 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> tomcat 6 reorganized the tomcat directory structure
[16:30:16 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> so you have to deal with putting the tomcat/shared/lib and tomcat/common/lib JARs that uPortal deploys in the correct location by hand
[16:30:28 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> well i am quite new to uPortal so i will downgrade
[16:30:32 EST(-0500)] <jayshao> I also don't know anyone who's running tomcat 6 in production yet...
[16:30:37 EST(-0500)] <jayshao> at least not uPortal
[16:30:44 EST(-0500)] <jayshao> not sure how bleeding edge you want to be
[16:31:03 EST(-0500)] <jayshao> KWhat_Work what're you looking at using uPortal for?
[16:31:14 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> Replacing Oracle Portal
[16:32:33 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> we are running oracle portal for our university portal and we dont really have the resources to manage the oracle servers and oid is kind of a pain in the ass as we are already running ldap and active directory,
[16:33:06 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> what do you have in the way of content and applications in you current portal?
[16:33:12 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> plus it seems that oracle only implements what the feel like with jsr-168 and they dont have simple solutions for importing data to their pref stores...
[16:34:12 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> EricDalquist: It seems most of the people that added content to the portal over the years have used iframes and SSO to link in php applications. Alll the portals i have rewritten are using Suns JSR-168 spec
[16:34:33 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> s/portals/portlets
[16:34:38 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> that's great
[16:34:53 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> puts you in a nice position
[16:35:14 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> what is your timeline for switching or are you just in the 'explore other options' phase right now?
[16:35:16 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> yes, I hope that uportal will provide the flexibility we so desperately need right now
[16:36:06 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> we are exploring other options... our IT shops kind of small, 2 sys admins and 1 programmer so I have a feeling the simplest system is going to be the best choice...
[16:37:25 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> do either of you know if its possible to migrate data in and out of uPortal for uesr preferences ?
[16:37:59 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> can you be more specific as to what 'user preferences' are?
[16:38:15 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> uPortal is very open and we have a few people actively working on import/export tools
[16:38:51 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> the issue is usually does the data in question match up with some similar system in uPortal
[16:38:55 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> In oracle each user has a preference store... i ran into a show stopper in oracle where i could not put data into a users preference store
[16:39:29 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> what is stored in the preference store?
[16:39:31 EST(-0500)] <awills> what kind of information goes into the preferences store?
[16:39:40 EST(-0500)] <awills> heh. too late
[16:39:51 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> speaking of import/export people awills is the guy I was referring to
[16:39:58 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> usually its information saved by the portlet ...
[16:40:41 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> PortletPreferences
[16:40:47 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> ah
[16:41:01 EST(-0500)] <awills> like, say, an individual's address book entries?
[16:41:12 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> so uPortal doesn't have a UI or tool for manipulating PortletPreferences for a specific user
[16:41:12 EST(-0500)] <awills> or just display preferences?
[16:41:40 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> but doing so wouldn't be too difficult ... you're thinking tasks like batch loading preferences into the portal for users?
[16:41:48 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> so they get new content in portlets X & WHY?
[16:42:07 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> interesting autocomplete there WHY was supposed to be Y
[16:42:17 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> like if i have a portlet and it has an edit page where a user can choose their fav color, then i would save that information somewhere so when they logg back in we know their fav color, but lets say i already know everyones fav color and would like to pre populate that information.
[16:42:29 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> ah
[16:42:38 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> so uPortal has a way to set defaults that the user can override
[16:42:49 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> that is the question
[16:42:58 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> when you publish a portlet in uPortal you can specify 'definition level'
[16:43:00 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> preferences
[16:43:26 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> and if the user hasn't set the preference themselves they get the definition level preference value instead
[16:43:29 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> EricDalquist: its a little more complicated because its like 10,000 users have different colors its not all going to default to black
[16:44:03 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> i need to pull data from a different source and populate that users information exteranally
[16:44:16 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> or if you knew which users wanted which colors it would be feasible to write a very small ammount of code and push that preference value into the store for each user
[16:44:28 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> EricDalquist: exactly !
[16:44:31 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> or
[16:44:36 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> if the portlet is code you control
[16:44:47 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> you could look at something like that as a user attribute
[16:44:51 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> not possible with oracle but im hopeing uportal is a bit better.
[16:45:00 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> uPortal has very flexible user attribute and grouping services
[16:45:12 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> so you can pull attribute information in from any number of sources
[16:45:20 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> and provide it to the portlet's USER_INFO Map
[16:45:23 EST(-0500)] <awills> yes it's very possible in uPortal, using any number of approaches
[16:49:28 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> anyone know if java has a logical xor operator?
[16:51:37 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> apparently the ^ operator is overloaded
[16:51:52 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> it is bitwise for numbers and logical for booleans
[16:59:31 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> EricDalquist: ^ should work
[16:59:41 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> oh logical
[16:59:44 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> lol
[16:59:54 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist>
[17:01:34 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> EricDalquist: http://www.uni-bonn.de/~manfear/javaoperators.php
[17:01:43 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> thanks
[17:02:27 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> im a little slow today, hit my self in the head with my car door this morning =)
[17:02:42 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> ouch
[17:06:01 EST(-0500)] <esm> xsl makes me cry
[17:06:24 EST(-0500)] <KWhat_Work> me to esm
[17:06:52 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> dealing with code from someone who was on the 'xsl is the best hammer ever ... look at all these nails' trip?
[17:07:59 EST(-0500)] <esm> um
[17:08:07 EST(-0500)] <esm> no the separation between code and xsl is good
[17:08:13 EST(-0500)] <esm> its just... a large volume of xsl
[17:08:22 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> lol
[17:08:27 EST(-0500)] <esm> and oxygen was confusing me
[17:08:33 EST(-0500)] <esm> but now i'm un-confused.
[17:08:53 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> that's good
[17:12:37 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> oh esm, that weird error message I'm getting from pluto
[17:12:41 EST(-0500)] <esm> yeah
[17:12:45 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> I haven't figured out exactly why yet
[17:12:46 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> but
[17:12:52 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> PortletContextManager.getPortletContext
[17:13:03 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> is returing the portal's ServletContext for any context that isn't found
[17:13:09 EST(-0500)] <esm> lol
[17:13:19 EST(-0500)] <esm> wtf
[17:13:29 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> I think it may actually be Tomcat code doing it too
[17:13:30 EST(-0500)] <esm> the codebaseis so under-tested its silly
[17:13:33 EST(-0500)] <esm> oh
[17:13:34 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> but I haven't really looked into it
[17:13:44 EST(-0500)] <esm> well it should still be tested
[17:13:47 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> yeah
[17:13:49 EST(-0500)] <esm> i plan on taking a look at cactus
[17:13:52 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> that's what I'm doing right now
[17:13:53 EST(-0500)] <esm> sometiem
[17:14:06 EST(-0500)] <esm> whats that? looking at cactus?
[17:14:11 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> no ... testing pluto
[17:14:21 EST(-0500)] <esm> oh
[17:14:32 EST(-0500)] <esm> well by under-tested i meant xUnit
[17:14:36 EST(-0500)] <esm> but yeah...
[17:14:43 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> yeah
[17:15:04 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> I know ... I was just joking that I was being the guinea pig
[17:16:58 EST(-0500)] <esm> yeah
[17:17:00 EST(-0500)] <esm>
[17:21:12 EST(-0500)] <esm> weird i don't know how it would return the portal's context unless that's what it asked for
[17:21:27 EST(-0500)] <esm> cause it's a lookup from a map
[17:21:29 EST(-0500)] <esm> hmm
[17:21:32 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> yeah, that was just a quick observation
[17:21:37 EST(-0500)] <esm> hehe
[17:21:41 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> I'll look into it more this weekend
[17:21:41 EST(-0500)] <esm> ok well i'm heading home
[17:21:44 EST(-0500)] <EricDalquist> later
[17:21:51 EST(-0500)] <esm> sounds good
[19:28:05 EST(-0500)] * awills (n=awills@uni1.unicon.net) has left ##uportal