Grouper Developers Forum

[Emily Eisbruch <>]

Draft Minutes, Grouper call 30-Jan-2013

Attending:

Tom Barton, U. Chicago (chair)  

Chris Hyzer, University of Pennsylvania  

Shilen Patel, Duke University

Bill Thompson, Unicon

Steve Olshansky, Internet2  

Emily Eisbruch, Internet2, scribe

Action Items

[AI] SteveO share the Grouper Download page notification with Andrew to get his input

Carry Over Action Items

[AI] (Shilen) start a design wiki for the legacy attribute migration  

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Legacy+attribute+migration

[AI] (Emily) reach out to frequent contributors on the list for refreshing the case studies (in progress)

[AI] (Chris) upgrade the Grouper demo to the latest Grouper version 2.1

[AI] (unassigned) add info to the wiki regarding doing testing on provisioning  

[AI] (unassigned) put test data in the Grouper demo to show using an LDAP source.

DISCUSSION

Grouper 2.1.3 Release

Congratulations to the team on the Grouper 2.1.3 release. Thanks to Chris for working through several issues in order to make this happen.

http://www.internet2.edu/grouper/software.html

SteveO has added new text (in blue) to the download page encouraging downloaders to sign up for the email lists. Will share that with Andrew to get his thoughts.

[AI] SteveO share the Grouper Download page notification with Andrew to get his input

Meetings and Outreach

A Grouper IAM Online webinar is scheduled for March 13, 2013. The plan is for 3 deployers to share their stories. Paul at University of Wisconsin-Madison has already agreed to participate, and we are waiting for confirmation from two other campuses.

The Internet2 Annual Member Meeting (previously called Spring Member Meeting) is being redesigned with greater emphasis on the CIO audience. Therefore the Annual Meeting in Arlington, VA in April 2013 will not be suited to multiple middleware sessions as we've had In the past.  

There will be an Executive Summit within the Annual Member Meeting, and it is hoped that will include updates on integration topics (including CIFER), on the NSTIC Scalable Privacy work, and some Federation topics.

There is no Internet2 Fall Member Meeting going forward. Starting in 2014, there are plans for an Internet2 technical congress in the fall.

To meet the needs of the Identity community, there are plans for an Identity Week, with various components (possibly to include ACAMP, InCommon CAMP, Working Group Meetings, REFEDs) most likely Nov 11-15, 2013 in California. More info coming on this.

In addition, in place of the middleware working group sessions that used to happen at Spring Member Meeting, there are plans for Virtual Open Houses, using Adobe Connect, to occur in early May 2013. More info coming on this.

Bill - the Apereo Conference in June in San Diego could also help facilitate working group and community collaboration. Bill is on the program committee and will keep us informed.

https://wiki.jasig.org/display/JCON/Apereo+2013+Conference

Identity Ecosystem Overview in the works

A subgroup of the InCommon TAC has been tasked with producing a report on the various activities within the identity ecosystem. The subgroup may be reaching out to some of us. 

Grouper UI Redesign

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Grouper+UI+redesign+v2.2

Excellent progress is being made on the new Grouper UI.  Michael received good response to the UI testing at:

http://bit.ly/TCUkIp

We can anticipate connecting the new UI to Grouper backend services soon.

Comments:

-New UI is looking good, it's intuitive

-Bill: there will most likely still be a need for a workflow-specific, task-specific UIs. An example is the Duke toolkit used for spinning up collaborations.

-Perhaps there will always be a need for custom, embedded Uis, that don't show folders, etc.

-Chris: the LITE UI can be linked from applications; this is being done at U. Penn

It was agreed that the customization of Uis for applications may be outside the scope of Grouper project work.

The standard APIs being worked on may help organizations implement their own customized Uis more easily.

Collaboration with the Shiro and Spring projects could also facilitate customized Uis.

Legacy Attribute Migration

Shilen started a wiki doc at 

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Legacy+attribute+migration

The overall goal is to migrate from legacy attributes to the new attribute framework.

- What is in scope? 

- Chris: replace group types and attributes 

-Chris: Since you can't add a custom list group to another group, it's not that useful, but some sites are using the custom list group, so we don't need to replace it. But that could be API-only

- Group types and attributes must be moved to new attribute framework and there must be a migration path.

Q: TomB: Would there be a residual for group type as an operational characteristic of groups?

A: Chris: those would go to the new attribute framework, so group types could become new attribute Defs

Folder Structure:

-Chris: Possibly take all built-in and custom and legacy attribute types and put them in one folder.

-Internal types could go to one place and new ones an institution creates could go in another.

Shilen: 

-current group types would become marker attributes.

-Fields are associated with group types and there is a foreign key

-The fields for group privileges all have the same foreign key to the base group type

-And all the privileges for attributes have the foreign key to the attribute def group type

-With group types going away, you'd lose the foreign key from the fields table. 

-Foreign key was originally for the UI.  It was like an LDAP Object class

-Now we can mark something as a certain type of group

-This would be in the Admin UI, and we must continue to support this in the Admin UI

-Also, we must figure out how to do this task in the new UI

-Chris: there is a table in the New Attribute Framework to constrain where you can assign certain attributes

-So some attributes are only assigned on the assignment of the marker

Continue this discussion at 4pm ET today 

Services in Grouper

Chris reported that his work on services in Grouper is coming along well. Chris is about to commit the final version of one of the APIs. After that, the project will become easier.

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Organizing+services+in+Grouper

Amazon Messaging

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Univ+of+Washington%27s+experiences+with+messaging

Chris had a good call with Amazon regarding messaging. Some of the info is under NDA.

Chris tends to be in favor of the Amazon solution based on Jim's suggestions.

Here is the Amazon SNS/SQS Messaging Proof of Concept:

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Amazon+messaging+POC

Next Grouper Dev Call: Wed. Feb. 13, 2013 at noon ET

Emily Eisbruch, Technology Transfer Analyst

Internet2

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