Newsletter - 200806 - June 2008

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1 Welcome
1.1 Editor's Message

2 Project Updates
2.1 Central Authentication Service (CAS)
2.1.1 CAS Server
2.1.2 CAS Clients (Java and PHP)
2.1.3 CAS Roadmap and Vision
2.1.4 CAS Deployers - Stand up and be counted!
2.2 uPortal
2.2.1 Announcing uPortal 3.0.1 - General Audience Release

3 Community News
3.1 uPortal 3 Adoption Efforts
3.2 uPortal Steering Committee - Update
3.3 ESUP-Portail: Collaboration in Information Technology with Morocco
3.4 Unicon's Cooperative Support Program Contributes Over 40 uPortal Enhancements to Open Source Community

4 Upcoming Events
4.1 JA-SIG UK Meeting (June 25, 2008)
4.2 9th Sakai Conference - Paris, France (July 1-3, 2008)
4.3 9th Libre Software Meeting - Mont de Marsan, France (July 1-5, 2008)
4.4 The JA-SIG Fall 2008 Unconference is Coming! (October 6-8, 2008)
4.5 Fall 2008 Internet2 Member Meeting (October 13-16, 2008)
4.6 EDUCAUSE 2008 - Orlando, Florida (October 28-31, 2008)

5 Notes from the Blogosphere
5.1 Sun's Open Source Blog - "The Aquarium"
5.2 Jason Shao's Blog
5.3 Unicon Blogs

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Welcome to the June 2008 edition of the JA-SIG Newsletter!

We have a lot of exciting content this month, including important CAS and uPortal announcements, very interesting news items, and an upcoming events calendar. The latter part of the newsletter highlights a few notes and posts "from the blogosphere".

I hope you enjoy this month's content! As always, feel free to send your comments or content to newsletter at jasig dot org.

Mark Mark (University of Manitoba), Editor, JA-SIG Newsletter

The CAS Server team is currently working on the next minor release (3.2.2) of the CAS Server. The current stable version, 3.2.1, is available on the CAS Downloads page.

Java
The CAS Client for Java 3.1.3 is now available and includes a number of bug fixes and new features. This new client can be found at the CAS Downloads page. Its also available from the public Maven2 repository for those who use Maven2 to manage their projects.

So what's changed? http://www.ja-sig.org/issues/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10100&styleName=Html&version=10540

PHP
phpCAS 1.0.0 RC1 is now available for download. Special thanks to Julien Marchal (Single Sign Out) and Brett Bieber (PEAR packaging).

Our CAS Vision and Roadmap is now up and under construction by the community. The development of this roadmap is being driven by community members, who are encouraged to add, edit, and comment on it.

The document can be found here: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/CAS/CAS+Vision+and+Roadmap

We're looking for open discussion on the future of CAS on the CAS developers mailing list.

If you have implemented CAS at your institution and have not yet added your name to the growing list of CAS Deployers, please do so. A list of CAS Deployers can be found here: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/CAS/CAS+Deployers

Additionally, CAS deployment particulars are listed for a number of institutions: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/CAS/CAS+Production+Set+Ups Feel free to add or update your institution's information on this page.

Contributed by:
ScottS (Rutgers University), Lead Developer, JA-SIG Central Authentication Service

JA-SIG is proud to announce the General Audience release of uPortal 3.0.1. uPortal 3.0.1 GA is the result feedback from the significant interest and use of the 3.0.0 GA release.

Full release notes are available along with a uPortal 3.0 release overview.

This release includes the following new features and fixes along with over 50 total resolved Jira issues:

ProxyServlet security vulnerability
Various import/export script fixes including; export user-prefs from Oracle, import entity-types with certain group services.
Restored CacheLdapSecurityContext (was missing in 3.0.0)
Local LDAP authentication now works
https URLs now work for portlets
Resolved issue with password manager channel failing for non-local users
Resolved UI issues when adding a channel that fails to render
Removed .zip packaging of uPortal distributions due to issues in the Windows Extractor tool
JSR-168 specification CSS classes
dbloader fails-fast if no mapping is found in dbloader.xml
Allow uP_fname & uP_args for guests
Allow more options for portlet preference loading for guests
VersionManager now populates "Powered By" string in theme
Added mediating factory bean to try multiple lazy-init beans by name and use the first one that instantiates without exception
Created a hidden category for channels to allow easier management
Updated patch revisions of all portal dependencies
Source and Quick Start downloads are available on the uPortal All Release page. JavaDocs and developer-centric materials are available on the project's Maven site

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 indirectly. Having this developer community available for both code and design insight has been invaluable.

Contributed by:
Eric Dalquist (University of Wisconsin-Madison), uPortal 3 Release Engineer

This is a reminder that we have a wiki page for those who are investigating uPortal 3.0 adoption: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/x/vQXP. We have 17 institutions represented there right now, and know that many others are talking about it and working on pilots this summer. You are invited to add your school to the list and tell us where you're at. For those of you who already have entries, please return there and bring us up to date on recent developments!

Thanks,
Jonathan Markow

The uPortal steering committee has been discussing and acting on follow-up on the successful St. Paul JA-SIG conference. One specific direction is that of positioning uPortal to participate in Google Summer of Code next summer and to institute an approach of appropriately-sized uPortal-related projects with mentors and mentees. Another specific near-term strategy for uPortal and the committee is to keep the project engaged with the growing set of schools immediately exploring uPortal 3 in order to foster near-term uPortal 3 adoption momentum. The steering committee is also eager to see the JA-SIG website update project becoming more active, giving the uPortal website update requirements another look.

If you have comments or suggestions about this work, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us at uportal-steering-committee at lists dot ja-sig dot org.

Jim Helwig
uPortal Steering Committee

During the past two years, the French CPU (Conference of Presidents from all the Universities) has developed an important program of collaboration in information technology with the Universities in Morocco.

This program is funded by the French government (Ministry MAE) to help the Universities in Morocco to have exchanges with French universities.

Several meetings were organized to define the principal actions of this program planned for 2009/2010. The main goal is the modernization of university information system activities using digital services for students and the staff.

The strategic committee in Morocco is composed of the Directors of the 14 Universities, the Ministry, and the committee in charge of the program. The decision to deploy ESUP-Portail/uPortal/CAS solutions at the universities to achieve these goals was finalized at the beginning of the year.

Two seminars have been organized by the ESUP-Portail consortium to explain the architecture of the system to Moroccan technologists and to transfer skills for the deployment of Uportal 2.6 and CAS 3.0.

In June, a meeting is planned in France with members of the strategic committee to define the next actions for this program.

Alain Mayeur
L'Université de Valenciennes

Unicon's Cooperative Support Program allows participating institutions to "gain all of the benefits of open source software designed specifically for higher education plus top-quality, professional support from a commercial vendor." But the product of these support engagements can also benefit the greater community, as outlined in a news article on the Unicon web site where they have enumerated over forty enhancements to uPortal, all contributed back to the community.

uPortal Enhancements http://www.unicon.net/node/1023

Unicon's Cooperative Support Program http://www.unicon.net/support/cooperative/

Unicon's Andrew Petro outlines the differences between JA-SIG Membership and the Cooperative Support Program http://www.unicon.net/blog/3/jasig_and_coop_support_membership

The next JA-SIG UK meeting will take place on June 25 and be hosted by Leeds University. For more details, consult the meeting web link below.

Link: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/JA-SIG+UK

Contributed by: Robert Sherratt (University of Hull, UK)

"Join us in Paris, France for the 9th Sakai Conference

The Sakai Foundation is pleased to announce that the 2008 Sakai Community Conference will be held in Paris, France. The dates will be Tuesday-Thursday, 1-3 July, with pre- and post-conference sessions and activities on Monday, 30 June and Friday, 4 July. All meetings and conference sessions will be held at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie. The ever popular Sakai technical demonstrations will take place on Wednesday evening, 2 July, at the Marriott hotel nearby."

For further information, see the conference web site at: https://sakai.educonference.com/paris/index.php

The LSM (Libre Software Meeting) provides an opportunity for interested parties to come together on the topic of free software. Over five days, conferences and workshops are open to everyone. This event is organized each year, with this year's event being hosted in the town of Mont de Marsan, from 1 to 5 July 2008.

For further information, see the meeting web site at: http://2008.rmll.info/?lang=en (English)

Dates:
October 6-8, 2008
October 9-10, developer meetings and optional post-conference activities

Place:
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Pyle Center, 702 Langdon Street, Madison, WI 53706-1420,
Front Desk: 608-262-1122

Registration/Fees:
Look for an announcement soon! Unconference registration fees are moderate--well below our typical conference registration

Accommodations:
The Edgewater Hotel $129/night - Deadline for guaranteed rate is September 1, 2008
800•922•5512 www.theedgewater.com
Make sure you ask for the JA-SIG room block and rate!

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

JA-SIG has always been about people coming together to share and learn in an open environment, and this is what an "unconference" is all about. The unconference format fits very well with our community values and goals. Last year's inaugural unconference was a rousing success and this year's promises to be even better.

This October event will provide both spontaneous and planned opportunities to collaborate on all JA-SIG community initiatives as well as initiatives from other community open source projects. 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 10 minutes. Any topic goes.
Code Clinics - Bring your uPortal, portlet, or CAS code or problem and work on it with core developers
Birds of a Feather Sessions - Discuss common interests, issues, problems with colleagues.
Screencast Factory - Show off your work while a facilitator captures it to share with the community.
Strategic Planning - What should JA-SIG be focused on next year? In three years? Join the conversation.
How-to's. How-not-to's. Tips and techniques.

The final schedule will be determined in real-time, interactively with the attendees.

More information will be available soon! See you at the Unconference!

The Fall 2008 JA-SIG Unconference Organizers

Dates: October 13-16, 2008
Place: New Orleans, Louisiana (Sheraton New Orleans Hotel)

"The Fall 2008 Internet2 Member Meeting provides the community an opportunity to share the latest information on timely issues and rapidly evolving areas of interest. The fall program will offer sessions that highlight innovative uses of advanced networking for research and teaching, as well as technical sessions on the development and evolution of high-performance network infrastructures in support of local to global cyberinfrastructure. Sessions will focus on initiatives and projects that explore ways in which advanced network applications, services, tools, and digital content empower and enhance the capability of research and education communities. In addition, the program will focus on the challenges of Business Continuity Planning and the progress of Health Science and Teaching and Learning/K20 initiatives. Case studies of how advanced networking has succeeded in enabling research and education, why, and what others can learn from this success are also encouraged."

Source: http://events.internet2.edu/2008/fall-mm/calls.cfm

"Mark your calendar for the premier information technology event in higher education, EDUCAUSE 2008, October 28-31 in Orlando, Florida. The program 'Interaction, Ideas, Inspiration' will include preconference seminars; track and poster sessions; small group meetings; and corporate exhibits, presentations, and workshops. ... "

Source: EDUCAUSE 2008 Web Site - http://www.educause.edu/e08

"A blog that has nothing to do with fish ... and everything to do with Open Source Java EE, XML, SOA and more ..." http://blogs.sun.com/theaquarium/

In his latest entry, Jason reflects on some of the community activity and industry trends, gleaned partly from his experience at the Portlets2008 conference. Read the full post here: http://jay.shao.org/ . Jason is the Director of Open Source Solutions at the CampusEAI Consortium.

The Unicon bloggers are always busy providing interesting content, including a recent post by Cris Holdorph on the final release of the JSR-286 specification. Read this and more at: http://www.unicon.net/blogs

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JA-SIG Newsletter - June 2008

Archives available in the JA-SIG wiki at: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/JSG/Newsletter

If your institution or company has items of interest to the JA-SIG membership, please submit them via email to newsletter at ja-sig dot org.

The next JA-SIG Newsletter will be published on or about July 15th, 2008. Articles for that edition of the newsletter should be submitted no later than Monday, July 14th, 2008.

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