Grouper Developers Forum

["Jessica Bibbee" <>]

Grouper Working Group Meeting
September 19, 2007

 

*Attendees*
Gary Brown, Bristol U. (stand-in chair)

Shilen Patel, Duke U.

Jess Mitchell, Duke U.

Klara Jelinkova, Duke U.

Joy Veronneau, Cornell U.

James Cramton, Brown U.

Bill Kasenchar, U. Pennsylvania

Jessica Bibbee, Internet2 (scribe)

 

Carry-over *Action Items*

[AI] {James} will open a JIRA issue on and work with {Michael} to contribute to LDAPPC development.

[AI] {Shilen} will repeat profiling and other diagnostics to gauge progress on GRP-6.

[AI] {Shilen} will contribute to the JNDI and/or JDBC development work.

[AI] {Tom} will share a write-up of his vision of a large-scale item that addresses integration of the I2MI-Common software and where it fits into the roadmap.

*Agenda*
1. Upcoming I2 Member meeting
2. Status of v1.2.1. Discuss possible release.
3. Review Duke's UI functionality requests < https://wiki.internet2.edu/confluence/display/GrouperWG/Grouper+UI+Functionality+Requests >
   . Group Search Capability
   . Individual Search Capability
   . Browsing
   . Granting privileges

*Discussion*

{Gary} led the discussion in {Tom's} absence, focusing mainly on a UI update and discussion.

-Upcoming Fall 2007 Internet2 Member meeting-
The Fall 2007 Internet2 Member Meeting will be held on October 8-11 in San Diego, California. Please join the developers at the Signet and Grouper Working Group for their combined meeting on Monday morning, 8-Oct. For more details, see < http://events.internet2.edu/2007/fall-mm/sessionDetails.cfm?session=3471&event=273 >. Additionally, Duke and Brown will share stories of their "Grouper Deployment Experiences" in a session on Tuesday afternoon, from 1:25-2:30pm PDT < http://events.internet2.edu/2007/fall-mm/sessionDetails.cfm?session=3442&event=273 >.

- Status of v1.2.1. Discuss possible release-
{Gary} has packaged the UI and a Quickstart for the next release, and {Blair} has put a freeze on the API. The Group agreed that the official v1.2.1 release should wait for completion on GRP-7. {Gary} announced that an internal release of Grouper v1.2.1 will soon be available.

 

{James} has been working on Ldappc v1.2.1 integration and said he will soon report back with feedback from testing.

 

{Shilen} has done some profiling and has submitted three JIRA issues, including GRP-34, GRP-36, and GRP-37. He has noticed some improvements in areas such as deleting groups and stems, and in bulk retrieval, though profiling still presents an area for improvement.

- Review Duke's UI functionality requests-
{Jess} explained the Duke UI Functionality Request page in the Grouper Wiki. {Gary} has responded with comments and discussion will continue as the work evolves. Refer to the page for full details: < https://wiki.internet2.edu:443/confluence/x/J0I >.

They discussed items such as the Group Search capability; {Klara and Shilen} offered suggestions on how to decreases the search time by combining results, etc. With regard to listing group privileges vs. to an individual, {Klara} suggested that filtering groups through a search would be useful.

Duke would like to be able to search specific subject attributes to obtain more specific matches. Gary indicated that this could be achieved by enhancing the Subject API, or by writing a custom SourceAdapter along with some custom UI code to map form input into a query string which could be processed by the SourceAdapter. {Jess} offered suggestions on clearing up confusion between name and ID, etc.  {Shilen} suggested allowing the Subject API to query, rather than have a single large search. This sort of change would need to take place at the Subject API level, with adjustments at the UI level. Working at this level requires a close partnering of the Subject API and UI.

The end user will now be aware of whether issues are API or UI, so the Group will have to weigh the tasks and delegate accordingly to each projects.

The group also explored Browsing, as Duke is requesting the ability to sort lists. Actually, this is now possible in the UI, though the default cutoff is set to 200. This value can be manually changed in the media.properties file; it is a configuration option that can be changed as needed. {Gary} suggested testing this to see what a maximum number might be while still getting acceptable results.

Granting privileges for large numbers of stems / groups is laborious in the UI. Duke would, sometimes, like to assign privileges and have them cascade down a branch. The problem is compounded by having to assign CREATE / STEM privileges in a different screen to group privileges. {Gary} suggested that API methods could be written to achieve this, but that they may be slow if privileges for many groups / stems are assigned. An alternative would be to write a script or use the XML import tool. {Klara} described a system she currently uses which has hierarchical data. It is possible to download an XML representation of data, make changes, and upload the XML selecting a function to apply. One advantage of this system is that changes can be run against a test database before they are applied in production. {Klara} agreed to share information such as sample XML and the XML schema.

 

The current location shown at the top of some pages does not have links for stem names. {Gary} agreed to change this for a future release and to look at other screens where stem names are not links.

{Jess} found browsing the hierarchy frustrating, which may in part be due to the current slowness of the UI. {Gary} suggested she try the QuickStart, which has a small database and responds reasonably quickly.

{Gary} fielded another request to install a confirmation mechanism if an action was going to delete all the members from a group, etc. This would help users make more informed decisions as they navigate the UI.

The next Grouper Working Group conference call will be held on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 12pm EDT.

-- 
Jessica Bibbee, Technical Analyst
Internet2

mobile: +1-734-255-6644

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