Grouper Developers Forum

[Tom Barton <>]

Thanks very much for this overview of where things now stand with 
Brown's deployment!

Cramton, James wrote:
> What we've seen now that we're starting to get some real data is that
> any future interface design for MACE Grouper needs to take common use
> cases, configurability, and ACLs very seriously. For example, ...

> I know there is talk of a project to review the UI requirements. Where does 
> that
> stand these days?
>  
> Over the next week, I will be documenting the issues we're having in
> JIRA, complete with screen shots and analysis.

Excellent. This type of data and feedback should help us to identify 
specific improvements needed for the UI.

More fundamentally, the as-shipped UI demonstrates just about *all* of 
the underlying API capabilities, and without modification it's suitable 
only for power users. Now several campuses are at or very near the point 
at which they'd like to provide a simpler UI to a broader usership. The 
question is how should one be produced? There are two main options: 
develop a second, ordinary-human usable "skin" on top of the existing UI 
infrastructure (through changes to properties, struts config, and a 
little custom jsp), or develop a wholly new UI application.

I'd really like to convince someone to look into the first option (new 
skin for existing UI), as it seems likely to be the quickest and 
cheapest way to produce a more usable UI. And developing a wholly new UI 
 may have to proceed without any corresponding funding, making it a 
higher hurdle.

>         20 min: Provision LDAP from MACE Grouper using LDAPpc

The fixes in v1.2.1, plus a one or maybe two line patch to ldappc to 
take advantage of one of them, ought to net a substantial performance 
improvement in ldappc. Might you be willing to benchmark it?

Tom