JASIG uPortal Mid-Atlantic Meeting
January 29, 2002
Uportal 2.0
status and IBS Channels - Peter Kharchenko
- Fixing bugs,
stress testing (after the release)
- Release mgmt.
-Package it up, release it, and clean up bugs afterwards. Version 2.0 will be
released, time stamped, and there will be updates release weekly or biweekly.
Release date is
the first week of February and marked as a pilot release. Known bugs are listed
in “Bugzilla”. Peter went over architectural features, channel services-from
the Destin presentation user profiles-system us user profiles-high level
overview of Uportal 2.0 features-as discussed at the Destin Conference. Graphics in user preferences has been
changed so that there are more arrows, allowing shortcuts. Columbia developed
group and authorization model for uPortal 2.0.
Profiles: user
profile & system profile (current we only have system profile)
Publish/subscribe:
Channel publishing document
Flexible
channel publishing
Group permission
Directory access
Performance
optimization
Better debugging
and documentation
Job file-drop in
the portal and distribute (channel updates)
Improved tools
for channel development
Administrative
tools for user management- to do detailed changes to the user setup. Java tools
that connect directly to the database (not web enabled).
Error reporting
channel- form for the user to fill out and sent to the support center.
-Group
management tools-Columbia
-Style sheet
management tools- deleting a style sheet, workflow source integration-common
API that different channels can use. Hoping to receive help from the OKI folks.
-
Web
Services-basic interfaces for sending channels remotely; web services server
and client
-
More
content and channels.
Who determines
the wish list? Peter, developers, meetings. Carl decides what is to be worked
on next.
IBS Channel Demo - Peter Kharchenko (These channels will not be included in the bundled release
of uPortal 2.0, but will be available for license separately from IBS)
-IBS briefcase-virtual hard drive managing files and folders.
-IBS channels-classifieds part of the portal but rendered in a small
window.
-IBS address book-retrieved from LDAP directory
-IBS Inktomi search-not searching portal
-IBS Calendar channel-can have shared calendars; calendars using IPlanets
calendar engine.
-IBS Survey Channel-multiple choice on fill in fields
-IBS News Channel- can subscribe to multiple news sources by category.
-IBS Language Translator-using babel fish.
Priority of the tree column layout-this is a near future item. We will
need more levels of nesting. Princeton needs this urgently.
Other future enhancements to uPortal, beyond version 2.0, might include
such things as:
·
Administrative tools
·
Group management tools
·
Web services rendering uPortal remotely
·
Tools for channels themselves
5th generation software just released
1st component – new luminus
2nd component – CMS (contect management services) &
uPortal
3rd component – Integration
With uPortal
·
Integrating it into our platform of technology
·
Modifying default XSLT templates
·
Augmenting functionality
Channels development for Luminus first release
·
Personal announcement
·
Campus..
·
Headline
·
Calendar notification
·
General content
·
Campus links
·
Bookmarks
·
Internet search
·
Course schedule & more
-Augmenting Functionality
* Dist. Layout Management-Inst. User but is extendible-User can control
their view and they will role out their next release and sign back into Uportal
when it is released into the overall. This is currently in development.
Anything that touches the framework is a candidate to be rolled back into the
community (i.e. Dist. layout Mgmt.)
Channels would be licensed, i.e. IBS channels
Campus Pipeline is interested in staying as close to the uPortal source
to stay in sync but they may “fork” the code to add necessary features for
their suite of applications.
* Channel category admin. Channel-would be packaged and made available.
*API for content management must be developed to work with documentation
(part of Luminus) work in progress –may not be in the Q2 release. Channels in
the first release of Luminus-Headlines channel- part of Infospace
Luminus pricing depends on size $340K to $775K list. Available in Q2.
Mike Barton- Uportal 2 up and running
-Get the code-see slides
-Get the jars- see slide list of jars
New Ant script in CVS facility helps a lot to pull this together must come from jarkarta
-Get application server-comes bundled with Tomcat.
-Get ant to build the make file from jakarta.org
Replace hsql/.jar with appropriate JDBC driver jar file for your database “logger.properties” file-default is portal.log-change the location to somewhere you can find.
-Modify
properties (RDbm.properties & PersonDirs.xml)
-Ant-see slide
Only need Ant Db if you’re running your own database
(oracle, etc.) the direction will be toward structured markup language-xmc
channels. (data.xml for data, table.xml
for structure of table)
Patty Gertz/Carl
Jacobson- uPortal wish list
New features open source project directed by the community the more you
are using the code, the more say you have in the new releases. Worked to
prevent the “forking” by campus pipeline and others. Use the Mellon Foundation
money to prevent this and buy time for Peter, Ken and Justin. We need packaging
so that schools that do not have Java developers can roll it out. University of Washington received a
grant to fund Web ISO-pub cookie project.
JA-SIG just received $800K from the Mellon Foundation for next year.
Visible discussion thread on new features. University of Virginia is
using Jive for discussion forums, if that could be merged with Columbia’s
groups.
Villanova wants better documentation- send it to Peter or Ken and they
will forward it to the technical writers. Best practices and lessons learned on
channel and style sheet development. Channel for RSS mgmt.
We currently
have guarantee one and half year funding for consultants from IBS
Tom
gave a brief overview of the content currently available to student pilot users
at Rutgers. Many channels leverage
content/applications already in existence at Rutgers, with channels providing
“front-doors” into existing pages and applications. Tom also discussed two central Oracle data warehouses that
have been in existence for the last 4 years that were called into service to
provide the basis for 2 new channels that he developed. Their Student Data Warehouse and Course
Data Warehouse feed new XML based channels built to deliver semester grades and
semester schedules to students.
Students can select any semester they wish, re-enter their original
portal password, and the channel window refreshes with the course/grade
information they requested.
Alex demonstrated a new Group Permissions channel for uPortal 2.0. The channel allows an authorized user
to create groups, create announcements, and assign portal users to the group so
they can browse all announcements created by the group administrator. In order for the group members to be
able to receive and review announcements, they would have to be subscribed to
the channel. This channel will be
incorporated into the uPortal 2.0 distributed release.
-Developed their own application/ Portal in Java
-They are looking to adopt the uPortal code framework
and see how they can migrate their existing channel content into that
framework.
-Could we develop interfaces that we use jointly? Classroom port switch
application to turn Internet access on and off in the classroom.
-Prof. office hours
(will open to students to set an appointment)
-
We will put the presentations and the minutes-next conference in mid-June
in Vancouver, Canada.
-
working sessions on channels
-
XSLT working sessions
-
post a message on JA-SIG about this meeting.
-
Next uPortal Regional meeting at Rutgers will be coordinated by Mark
Washington again.