Grouper Developers Forum

[Emily Eisbruch <>]

Grouper Call 5-May-2010

(Off-week call to coordinate Grouper 1.6 release)

 *Attending*

Tom Barton, U. Chicago  (Chair)

Gary Brown, Bristol

Shilen Patel, Duke 

Chris Hyzer, U. Penn   

Tom Zeller, U. Memphis 

Ron Hebron, Cardiff University

Steve Olshansky, Internet2  

Emily Eisbruch (scribe)

 

*Discussion*

Chris will work with SteveO to establish the test instance of Grouper “in the cloud” after the release of Grouper 1.6.

*SMM Debrief*

*Grouper uPortal Integration*

At Internet2 Spring Member Meeting, Chris talked to Andrew Petro about Grouper uPortal integration. U. Chicago has developed some read only code for uPortal integration. The plan is for Chris to look at this and perhaps to add write capability.

There is the possibility, long-term, of replacing uPortal group management with Grouper. Advantages include 1) uPortal can focus on portals and not on group management and 2) institutions can leverage Grouper features not in uPortal. 

Chris has started a conversation on the uportal-dev list about some of the issues.

http://www.jasig.org/uportal/mailing-lists

It will be important to leverage uPortal Grouper integration already done by the French ESUP-Portail and ESCO-Portail.  (They used an older version of Grouper that did not have web services.)

Some enhancements to Grouper will likely be required to help to enable integration with uPortal. So this Grouper uPortal integration could be linked to a future Grouper release.

Chris asked if Shibboleth attribute resolver could be relevant to the Grouper uPortal integration, specifically in a federated situation – where someone logs in and has certain attributes that need to be linked dynamically to a Grouper group.  This will be a topic for future thought. 

*Grouper Shibboleth Discussions*

TomZ talked with Chad at Spring Member Meeting. They hope to meet again at Advance CAMP in Raleigh, perhaps with a broader group of Grouper and Shib developers. The goal is to increase dialog and collaboration between the developers for these two projects.

Chad and Scott asked if there will be a Grouper JAR in the Shib IdP 1.3 release. This will be discussed more going forward. 

The Grouper data connector is built on the API, not on top of the Grouper client. There could be an issue if some organizations want to use web services but not the API.  This architecture will need to be discussed in the future. 

TomZ and Shilen will help set up a discussion at Advance CAMP between Grouper and Shib developers. 

*Grouper 1.6 Release*

Code freeze is targeted for Tuesday, May 11. Target release date is Friday, May 21.

TomZ noted that to enable testing, Ldappc-ng work and Grouper Shib work has been moved to a different project in SVN. It will be versioned with the rest of Grouper.  The binary API will not contain ldappc or ldappc-ng since that is not consistent with the other packages.  There will be a simple ant script in the API to pull it over.

*Grouper ESB Connector*

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/~/Grouper+to+ESB+design

Chris has received Rob’s Grouper ESB Connector work is and will review it in a few days.  

TomB: where should the ESB Connector appear in terms of packaging of Grouper components?

A: It is comprised of four JARS. Total footprint of the API with the ESB connector is about 49 meg.  Decision is to keep it with the Grouper Loader and API.  

Rob’s documentation will include how to use the connector with different types of targets.  It was noted that the Grouper ESB Connector can be used to send XMPP messages to Grouper client. It doesn’t have to send messages to an ESB. It’s really an HTTP and XMPP two-way notifier.  We need to emphasize this in the documentation. 

Rob will open a JIRA for the ESB work.

https://bugs.internet2.edu/jira/browse/GRP-431

*Other Items for Grouper 1.6 Release*

Chris is wrapping up permissions. He is working on subject and attribute picker.

Gary will work on the paging issue.

https://bugs.internet2.edu/jira/browse/GRP-434

TomB  will not be available to hold a Grouper-dev call on May 12.

Code freeze is targeted for Tuesday, May 11. Target release date is Friday, May 21.

Emily Eisbruch, Technology Transfer Analyst

Internet2

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