Grouper Users - Open Discussion List

[Tom Barton <>]

Thank you Rob!

Perhaps Grouper's biggest deficiency right now is its documentation.
There's tons of detail in the wiki, but it's too hard to find answers to
many typical questions. I hope that this book, and the wiki-revamping
effort led by AnnKW that's underway in parallel, will make a real
difference to many grouper deployers.

As with other substantial efforts in the grouper project, I want us to
be driven by real use cases. So please do help Rob (and AnnKW & crew) by
telling us about what you wish you could have found easily in the
documentation but didn't.

Rob, the "Provisioning to Grouper" section probably should include the
Grouper Loader.

Thanks!
Tom

On 9/24/2010 4:15 AM, Rob Hebron wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I've been using Grouper for some years now, and have been involved with
> the development team for a few months. I've suggested to a few people
> that I could best direct my contributions to the documentation, with a
> positive response. What I propose is to put together a Grouper "Book"
> with a coherent mixture of documentation and recipes for getting things
> done. It will go from an introduction, through deployment to
> advanced/new features and further development. An outline is listed
> below - it's am ambitious one, and may take some time, but I think it
> will be useful, even when still work-in-progress.
> 
> I'm proposing to "write" it on the Wiki. It will not replace existing
> documentation, but will cover the same ground, referring to (or even
> including) existing pages where relevant, while trying to fill in any
> gaps. I also propose to sync the documentation with released versions,
> exporting it and checking a frozen version into subversion alongside the
> code.
> 
> What do people think about this? Anything I've missed out that would be
> useful? Does the structure make sense? I'd particularly welcome case
> studies and experiences from sites that have implemented or are planning
> to implement Grouper as I think these really help to outline what
> Grouper can do to people who are new to it. Some of these are already up
> in the Wiki, but are there more out there?
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rob
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Grouper Book outline
> ====================
> 
> Introduction
> 
> * What is Grouper and what can it do?
> * How could Grouper be useful to me? Typical use-cases
> * What is Internet2 and where does Grouper fit into it?
> 
> Part A - Grouper core
> ---------------------
> 
> Case studies
> 
> * High-level write up of Grouper implementations, from business-case to
> production, including benefits and problems
> 
> Getting started
> 
> * Installing the quick start
> * Starting the quickstart
> * Exploring Grouper - admin and lite interfaces, terminology used,
> workflows for typical tasks
> 
> Moving to production
> 
> * Planning checklist
> * Setting up and configuring an external database
> * Configuring an external subject source
> * Installing and running an application server
> * Installing Grouper UI on the application server
> * Running Grouper in production - daemon/service startup etc.
> * Don't forget - backup, failover options etc
> 
> Running in production (N.B. I see this as a large section, and a good
> place for tips/tricks/scripts etc to go)
> 
> * gsh for common tasks
> * Monitoring Grouper
> * Querying Grouper
> * Exporting from Grouper
> * Management/admin tasks - daily report, cleaning subjects, cleaning
> memberships,
> * Audit monitoring
> * Getting help - wiki, mailing lists
> * Contributed tips and code
> 
> Upgrading Grouper
> 
> * Export/Import
> * Upgrading the database schema with data in-place
> * Installing a fresh schema and importing data
> 
> Part B - Getting more from Grouper
> ----------------------------------
> 
> Web service
> 
> * Purpose
> * Installation
> * Running
> * Testing
> * Use-cases
> 
> Accessing data/provisioning from Grouper
> 
> * Provisioning
>     * LDAPPC
>     * LDAPPC-NG
>     * Notifications
>     * ESB
>     * Hooks
> * API/Grouper Client
> 
> Provisioning to Grouper
> 
> * API/Grouper client
> * ESB
> * Webservice
> 
> Other services
> 
> * Role and permission management
> * Attribute framework
> * Custom group types
> * Rules framework (v2 feature)
> 
> Integrating Grouper (N.B/. Another cookbook
> 
> (incl. v2 features)
> * Integrating into existing environments (existing LDAP groups etc.)
> * Shib integration
> * Federating groups
> * Kuali Rice
> 
> Community contributions
> 
> * Contributed code, how-tos etc.
> 
> Part C - Deep dive into Grouper
> -------------------------------
> 
> Inside Grouper
> 
> * Architecture
> * Persistence with Hibernate
> * UI
> * Daemon - scheduled tasks
> 
> High availability
> 
> * Database availability - overview of options for different databases
> * Daemon availability - example active/passive cluster running on Linux
> * UI availability - example active/passive cluster running on Linux
> 
> Developing for Grouper
> 
> * Getting involved
> * Mailing lists
> * Bug-reporting
> * Feature requests
> * Contributing code
> * Developer calls