Grouper Developers Forum

[Chris Hyzer <>]

> It would depend on the UI whether or not subjects can be  separated by source.  In any case, LDAP never sorts anything.  My feeling still is that if I'm dealing with a browser user I'm

> better off not presenting so many subjects.  The ones I do show I can sort myself.  If 'm dealing with a program client, well, it can do the sorting.

 

Im not sure what we are debating, ldap vs sql, algorithms for sorting lists, or what features grouper should have…  I guess I can address each one:

 

1.       LDAP vs SQL:   SQL can select 1000 subjects in 10 queries.  If LDAP can do that, lets do it.  If not, lets not.  Note that in optimizing the Grouper UI performance problems, I agree with Gary that there is a lot of value in caching subjects, I will look into this as well. 

2.       Algorithms for sorted lists: If you want to show the first (or second or third or whatever) page (of whatever size you want, 10, 20, 50) of results of data from various subject sources, and the sorted by a field: name or description which is not stored in Grouper, but in the source, then you need to get all the data.  You cant get the first unsorted 100 and sort those, or you will miss some.  Note that groups can be super large, e.g. 80k members.  If so, don’t even try to sort them (if the name and description is not in grouper).  Ive heard from penn that showing a 1000 member group in page sizes of 100, sorted, is something people want.  They see a group member list which is not sorted (because our sort limit is a few hundred), and they get annoyed.

3.       What features grouper should have:  grouper should have a way to return a page of members sorted by name or description of a group of small or medium size.  We do that in the grouper UI, and we have a way to do that in the API. We should add to WS, and we should make it more efficient if we can (in SQL sources) so we can increase the limit of where it is available

 

Thanks!

Chris

 

 

From: Jim Fox [mailto:]
Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 11:48 PM
To: Chris Hyzer
Cc: Jim Fox;
Subject: Re: subject API changes

 

If you have 1000 subjects in a group, and you want to show the first 50 on the screen, and the thing you are sorting by is in the subject source, you have to get them all, and sort.  If we were dealing with one source at a time we could add paging/sorting in the subject source, but you could have a group with members from several sources.

 

It would depend on the UI whether or not subjects can be  separated by source.  In any case, LDAP never sorts anything.  My feeling still is that if I'm dealing with a browser user I'm better off not presenting so many subjects.  The ones I do show I can sort myself.  If 'm dealing with a program client, well, it can do the sorting.

 

Jim