Grouper Developers Forum

["Jessica Bibbee" <>]

 Grouper Working Group Meeting
November 28, 2007

*Attendees*
Gary Brown, Bristol U. (stand-in chair)
Shilen Patel, Duke U.
RL "Bob" Morgan, U. Washington
Joy Veronneau, Cornell U.
Steve Barrett, Cornell U.
Caleb Racey, Newcastle U.
Steve Langella, OSU
James Cramton, Brown U.
Ann West, EDUCAUSE/Internet2
Steve Olshansky, Internet2
Jessica Bibbee, Internet2 (scribe)

Carry-over *Action Items*
[AI] {Kathryn} will draft a proposal for future Ldappc work. (14-Nov-07)
[AI] {Bill} will lead the drafting of an analysis of UI improvements. (14-Nov-07)
[AI] {Tom} will email the Group with more information on potential Ldappc modifications. (31-Oct-07) (14-Nov-07)

*Agenda*
1. v1.2.1 Status / v1.2.1 RC1 Released
2. Brown Releases Ldappc Alternate
3. Grouper & Web Services
  . What forms of "web services interface" ought to be in the core [Grouper] product in, say, the next 1 year? 
  . Should SOAP be supported by the first WS-capable release (which *might* also have additional capabilities)?
  . What tools are most commonly used on campuses to create WS instances and their clients?
  . What Grouper-WS authentication and access control requirements do campuses have? 

*Discussion*

-Brown Releases Ldappc Alternative –
{James} reported Ldappc having a slower-than-required performance for daily use, i.e., it took 90 minutes to complete a single run. They have thus developed a QA application that does most of the searching, and subsequently shortened the run time to 13 minutes. A script supports group provisioning, beyond the (course) stem, and also accepts argument of an individual group as a call-out from the Grouper interface. When adding an individual to a group, a script finds the parents, etc. and sends that list of groups to the application for a more or less real-time provisioning. 

The work Brown has done should be generic enough that others can adapt it without a complete overhaul of the code. {James} will avail this work to the working group in the next few weeks.

- Grouper v1.2.1 RC1 Released-
{Joy} mentioned finding errors when the wheel group is turned on but does not yet exist, and you cannot proceed. It seemed to be a new problem, specific to v1.2.1 (RC1). {Shilen} ran into exceptions due to not having a database driver in the class path. {James} said they are hoping to do a build later this week for getting 
v1.2.1 in place. {Gary} reiterated the importance of testing to ensure a stable (official) release.

-Grouper v1.2.1 Status-
{Gary} announced that they will continue to accept feedback through the end of the week, and in the absence of further issues, the developer team will work to package up the official release of Grouper 
v1.2.1, with a target date of the first week of December.

-Grouper & Web Services-
{Gary} emailed the Grouper-Dev mailing list (26-Nov) asking for feedback regarding requirements for web services. He compiled the answers in the following document, which served as the foundation of the discussion: < 
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3bavff >. 

  #1 What forms of "web services interface" ought to be in the core [Grouper] product in, say, the next 1 year? 
The Group expressed an interest in a combination of SOAP and REST; gFIVO also expressed an interest in strongly typed JAX-WS.

  #2 Should SOAP be supported by the first WS-capable release (which *might* also have additional capabilities)?
The majority of attendees agreed that SOAP ought to be supported by the first WS-capable Grouper release.

  #3 What tools are most commonly used on campuses to create WS instances and their clients?
{Gary} asked if the combination of Globus, AXIS, and Introduce is limited to GridGrouper use, or if it could be applicable to others. {Steve Langella} answered that it could be used outside the GridGrouper scope. He also briefly introduced WSRF (WS-Resource Framework, < 
http://www.globus.org/wsrf/ >), which is a specification that allows you to handle an address, via persistent or staple web services. This is different than Globus or Introduce, which are pure web services. Introduce actually allows them to build WSRF services.

  #4 What Grouper-WS authentication and access control requirements do campuses have? 
The Group's responses varied in terms of current practice and desired requirements: http simple-authority, container authentication, WS-Security, IP and username/password, PKI.

{Steve Barrett} also discussed some of the implications of designing characteristics around authentication. {Bob} suggested Grouper proceed via a common scenario having a remote UI that will operate much in the same way as the current Grouper UI. Getting the right credentials to the right tier can be handled a number of ways, determined by the deployers.

{James} pointed out that there ought to be plans for revisioning in place, to accommodate a roll-over from one release to the next. {Steve suggested following the deprecation rules of Java; it will be important to have a good benefits signature worked out.

Discussion of Grouper and web services will continue on the mailing list and future Working Group calls. With some additional help and continuing investigative work, they will work on tools and a proposal for next steps. Use cases will benefit these efforts and help to narrow down the requirements of the core web services.

The next Grouper Working Group conference call will be held on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at 12pm EST.


-- 
Jessica Bibbee, Technical Analyst
Internet2

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