Grouper Users - Open Discussion List

[THIA Jean-Marie <>]

Hello Tom,

Thanks for the rapid answer. I am slowing down and I'll work on my points one 
by one.

So I will begin by provisioning the courses groups, and I'll try to do it in 
java. This way I will a deep understanding of the API. The second step will 
be the provisioning of the members of each groups, and the first experiment 
is based on spreadsheet data.

I am postponing the interoperability needs after these two steps, mainly it 
is all about searching for a group and getting attributes. My classroom's 
schedule application (written in c#) will rely on Grouper as a group registry.

Jean Marie

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Barton 
> [mailto:]
> Sent: lundi 23 juillet 2007 16:08
> To: THIA Jean-Marie
> Cc: 
> 
> Subject: Re: [grouper-users] Hello from Jean Marie
>
>
>
> THIA Jean-Marie wrote:
> > I am not sure how to begin in naming stems and groups for our
> > courses. So if anyone have an idea or practice, I'll be glad to have 
> > starting point.
>
> Both Brown and Duke Universities are implementing course group
> management with grouper and have developed a stem and naming scheme for
> them. James, Shilen, would you care to explain what you decided and any
> rationale?
>
> > The second point is the provisioning of groups and member's list.
> > There is a Java API, but I am not familiar with Java, and anyway my
> > application is written in C# and use the .net framework. This framework
> > use a membership and a role provider to handle membership and group
> > manipulation and query. So I can write these providers to enable any
> > .net application in using Grouper, but I have to talk to the Java API
> > and the best way for this is a web service. So my question is about the
> > availability of a web service enabled API.
>
> This is often requested and is in our plans. In the meanwhile, at least
> one grouper adopter has experimented with Apache Axis to present
> portions of the grouper API via SOAP. Another is intending to use ruby
> on rails to simultaneously provide three styles of web services
> interfaces: xml/rpc, REST, and SOAP. But these remain just good ideas
> for now, not completed work as yet.
>
> Do you have specific functional requirements that this web services
> interface ought to meet? Real-world needs of yours and others will help
> us to determine how best to present the grouper API via web services.
>
> > A third question, as I have a very poor experience with Java. Is the
> membership controlled ? When a group member list is provisioned is there
> any form of control with the existence of the member. And if yes, may
> all the members be in an LDAP Directory.
>
> Could you clarify what type of control you need?
>
> Potential members of grouper groups are presented to grouper through one
> or more Subject sources. There are reference implementations of the
> Subject API available that gather Subjects from relational databases or
> from LDAP directories.
>
> Tom