Grouper Developers Forum

[Steve Olshansky <>]

**Grouper Call 19-March-2008**

**Attending**
Tom Barton, U. Chicago (chair)
Sanjay Vivek, Newcastle U. (UK)
James Cramton, Brown U.
Gary Brown, Bristol U. (UK)
Ann West, Internet2/Educause
Kathryn Huxtable, independent
Chris Hyzer, U. Penn
Shilen Patel, Duke
Josh Drummond, UC-Irvine
Neil Matatall, UC-Irvine
Dave Donnelly, Stanford
Mike Olive, Stanford
Joy Veronneau, Cornell U.
Tom Zeller, U. Memphis
RL "Bob" Morgan, U. Washington
Caleb Racey, Newcastle U. (UK)
Steve Olshansky, Internet2 (scribe)

*New Action Items*
[AI] (Chris and Jennifer) will document the UI changes and send to the 
list for review.
[AI] (Chris) will send a note to the dev list about REST, requesting 
feedback.
[AI] (Kathryn) will document her performance tuning analysis and send to 
the Grouper and Signet dev lists

*Carryover Action Items*
[AI] (TomZ) will start a discussion about the potential applicability of 
the Shibboleth extension framework on the Grouper-Dev list
[AI] (UI Subgroup/Jennifer) will offer some corrections to the UI, and 
some additional pages

**Discussion**

*Apache Rampart & Grouper-WS*
Rampart has been incorporated in the code Sanjay passed along to Chris 
for incorporation in the code base. Due to the inability to use simple 
auth and Rampart simultaneously there will be 2 servlets - connecting to 
each would require different URLs. Rampart will require some 
implementation effort, and can be removed from the web.xml file if 
desired. It will be commented out by default. There will be 
documentation accompanying this to clarify its use.

Best approaches to engineer security for web services will be addressed 
in the future…

*Readying v1.3.0*
Open issues:
<https://bugs.internet2.edu/jira/browse/GRP>
<https://bugs.internet2.edu/jira/browse/MCO>

There was discussion of various Jira issues, and all are encouraged to 
review these ASAP and resolve them as possible. There was a lengthy 
discussion about which issues in particular are the highest priority for 
addressing in the upcoming release - i.e. what goes in 1.3.0 & what 
waits until 1.3.1 or beyond?

*Next release*
The Spring Internet2 Member Meeting April 21-23 would be an obvious 
target for the release since it presents a great opportunity for 
increased visibility, *if* this is practical.

What features/functionality should be included in the next release?

Consensus on the call was that compression of ID and UUID columns should 
wait.

UI modifications? The U. Penn folks are working on this with Gary, and 
integration of the changes should be fairly straightforward.

[AI] (Chris and Jennifer) will document the UI changes and send to the 
list for review.

API - Transaction control is done and will be included. Locking was 
discussed, but postponed pending consensus on the best approach. Foreign 
key support will also be included.

*Web services*
We discussed the items in Chris' mail to the Grouper-Dev list 19-Mar-08, 
subject: "web services update." The focus will be on the UI rather than 
on the remaining work items in Chris' mail, since the UI is a higher 
priority for the release.

It was observed that before spending time developing new interfaces, we 
should be sure that people are actually writing clients for them. We 
should only make things more complicated in response to demand/need…

[AI] (Chris) will send a note to the dev list about REST, requesting 
feedback.

Ldappc v1.0.1 - Kathryn is researching other approaches for potential 
inclusion, including for making membership population faster. In general 
the preference would seem to be improving speed rather than reducing 
memory usage, since making changes is generally time-sensitive.

[AI] (Kathryn) will document her performance tuning analysis and send to 
the Grouper and Signet dev lists

Unresolvable subject deletion utility (USDU) - in progress, should be 
ready for inclusion in v1.3.0

*Preliminary release date*
we will aim for a code freeze on 16-April, and a release candidate (RC) 
on 18-April, including Ldappc.

*Combined Signet/Grouper WG session at Spring Internet2 Meeting*
April 21, 2008, 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

http://events.internet2.edu/2008/spring-mm/sessionDetails.cfm?session=3739&event=280

*Next Call*
Wed 2-April-2008 Noon EDT.


--
Steve Olshansky
Internet2 Middleware & Security Flywheel
http://middleware.internet2.edu/
http://security.internet2.edu/