Middleware Announcements

[Renee Woodten Frost <>]

The Internet2 Middleware Initiative announces the release of Grouper version 1.6.  The Grouper Groups Management Toolkit is designed to function as the core element of a common infrastructure for managing group information across integrated applications and repositories. It enables project managers, departments, institutions, and end-users to create and manage institutional and personal groups.

This release expands Grouper's ability to integrate with or provision to a wide variety of external technologies. Read the article about integration with Kuali Rice.

Grouper v1.6 also includes substantial enhancements to Grouper's access management capabilities and dozens of fixes and improvements over the previous release.

To browse what's in there, to download the new release, and for upgrade instructions, please visit

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

*New Features*  

* Web service enhancements Web services now support the new attribute and permission frameworks, subject service, new options for existing operations. 

* Kuali Rice integration Connector for Kuali Rice to communicate with Grouper can delegate Group decisions to Grouper and facilitate workflow in Grouper actions.

* New Ldappc A completely new Ldappc, Ldappc-ng, is included in the Grouper Toolkit in addition to the original Ldappc. Ldappc-ng uses SPML for provisioning and builds on Shibboleth's attribute resolver technology. The new attribute framework and permissions can be provisioned to LDAP with Ldappc-ng. 

* ESB integration Grouper can provision group and folder information to and read in changes from an ESB using HTTPS or XMPP. 

* Subject picker External applications can use the Grouper subject picker UI component to pick people. 

* Lite UI skinning Lite UI can look like the application that launches tt and can have customized text and instructions. 

* Flattened memberships A new, additional flattened memberships table improves notification performance and lays the foundation for further read performance enhancement through the Grouper Toolkit.    

Enjoy!

Tom Barton, U. Chicago, Grouper Project Lead
on behalf of the Grouper Developers