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Recent Unicon OpenSource Activity
relevant to uPortal
Andrew PetrouPortal Developer meeting at
Johns Hopkins University,
23 April 2007© Copyright Unicon, Inc., 2006. This work is the intellectual property of Unicon, Inc. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of Unicon, Inc. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from Unicon, Inc.
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1. Ick! Marketing!
2. Component Listing
3. Context
4. Announcements
5. Email Preview Portlet
6. toro-channels
7. toro-portlets
8. Next steps
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This is not a marketing slide deck
• At least, it is my intent that it not be.
• Purpose
– Raise awareness of opportunities
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Unicon isn’t the only one contributing
• Viz. Mark Boyd / SunGardHE: efforts in
uPortal 2.6 and in the Sandbox to share
enhanced DLM code.
• Jason/Mark/Jen: Drag and Drop in uP 2.6
• Vincent Mathieu of ESUP-Portail: quickstarts
• Eric, Elliot, Peter on uP3…
• Et al. / Etc.
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But…
• These contributions are pretty interesting
too…
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2: Component Listing
What open source activities are we
talking about?
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San Jauquin Delta College
• Columbia Announcements USC
Announcements Delta College
Announcements branch
• Email Preview Portlet
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Work in uPortal 2.6
• Release engineering activities I’ve found time
for
• Fixes and enhancements from Academus
merged into uPortal by Nick Bolton and
others
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“OpenToro”
• Academus 2.1 was code-named “Toro”
• The functionality that was in Academus is
being open sourced*
• The Academus brand is not being
opensourced – the resulting open source is
called “OpenToro”, not Academus
• Getting the terminology straight will probably
contribute to Andrew’s sanity…
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OpenToro
• toro-channels
– IChannels and framework
• toro-portlets
– portlets
• toro-sdk and toro-resource-pool
– utilities
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toro-channels
• http://code.google.com/p/toro-channels/
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toro-channels
• Classifieds
• News
• Collaborative
Groupware course
management system
• Survey
• Calendar
• Bookmarks
• Gradebook
• LDAP password change
• Notepad
• Notification
• Permissions Admin
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toro-channels
• Eve performance-enhanced local group store
• “CSCR” client-side channel rendering
technology – asynchronous channel
rendering using frames
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Toro-portlets
• http://code.google.com/p/toro-portlets/
• Gateway SSO (single sign on)
• Briefcase (file sharing)
• Messaging / Notifications
• Permissions management meta-portlet
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Toro-sdk
• http://code.google.com/p/toro-sdk/
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toro-resource-pool
• Predates Commons DBC, etc.
• Nice debugging / logging facilities
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Context
Putting this stuff in the open source is
neato, but why are you doing it?
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Why open source?
• Easier to deliver on support and services on a
platform everyone can use “eyes wide open”
• Find the right fit in each interaction between
what Unicon does and what the customer can
do
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GPL
• Others have argued far more eloquently than
I can for the philosophical virtues of GPL
• GPL allows everyone to benefit from (and
Unicon to have a chance to provide support,
services, and training on) any further
development of this code
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Unicon’s angle?
• Healthier JA-SIG projects more adoption
wider customer base for support and
services
• Others may fix bugs, answer questions, even
add features. Non-Uniconer calories.
• Empower customers. Opensourceness is a
feature.
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Why Google Code?
• Path of least resistance
• Cheap, easy, and fun
• SVN source control
• Issue tracker
• Wiki
• Downloads
• Online account, committership management
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USC_Announcements++
• Columbia USC
– HTML announcement content
• USC SJDC Announcements
– Alerts, multiple instantiability,
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San Jaoquin Delta CollegeEmail Preview Portlet
Email Preview Portlet
Announcements
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Email preview portlet
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EPP In Google Code Hosting
• http://code.google.com/p/email-preview-portlet/
– Wiki
– Issue tracking
– Downloads
– SVN source control
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Rich Calendar event model
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Day, Week, Month views
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Surveys have pages
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Pages have questions
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Questions have details
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Publishing the Survey
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Analyze Survey Results
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Left Hand Info Bar
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Client-side channel rendering
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Notifications Portlet
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Notifications Portlet
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Briefcase Portlet
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Briefcase portlet
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Briefcase Portlet Personal Files
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Briefcase Portlet shared files
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Sharing Folders through Briefcase
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toro-portlets Gateway SSO Portlet
• Gateway Portlet
– Clever JavaScript to
“step through” a remote
application’s login
process
– Can render links to
launch authenticated
external app in new
window
– Can go ahead and
authenticate and display
in-inline-frame
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Password caching
Portal
Channel
Channel
Channel
Password-protectedservice
Password-protectedservice
Password-protectedservice
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
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Gateway SSO Portlet
Portal
Portal
Portal
Portal
Password-protectedwebsite
Password-protectedwebsite
Password-protectedwebsite
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
PWPW
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toro-portlets
• Briefcase Portlet
– Put and get files
– File sharing
– File system binding
– API for adding new file stores (e.g. WebDAV)
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Next Steps
Opportunities
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Organic Opportunities
• The code’s out there.
• GPL
• Therefore anyone can take any part of this
and use it for local success / to grow an
opensource project.
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Goals
• Open source on principle
• Open source for benefit of current Academus
customers -- awareness, maintenance
• Growth of opensource projects around this
code?
• Contribution of this code in furthering existing
projects
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Bookmarks example
• Toro-channels has a Bookmarks channel
• Eric / UW has a beautiful Bookmarks Portlet
• Plausible path forward: whatever features are
worthwhile in the gap are added to
PBookmarks, migration path, standardize on
PBookmarks for bookmarks in uPortal
• Don’t want competing bookmarks projects
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Survey channel
• Sales tells me the toro-channels Survey
channel is competitive
• uPortal could likely use a good survey facility
• Is this it?
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SSO Gateway
• If you’re not using a general ISO/SSO
solution
• If you can stomach the store-and-forward
approach to replay of end user credentials
• Then this portlet is pretty neat, flexible,
general technology for performing specific
SSO integrations
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Calendar
• Hey Rutgers, how ‘bout that iCal/xCal
rendering channel???
• But: Bedework, Zimbra, Chandler, …
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Briefcase Portlet?
• Rutgers has one
• Toro-portlets has one
• Both probably have room for improvement
• Merge into a single briefcase portlet project?
• Question today on-list about the Briefcase
CVS HEAD
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On Projectness
• Some uP channels and portlets don’t feel
very “projecty”
– Discussion lists?
– Releases?
– Issue tracker
– Progress?
• Likely untapped value in getting more
“projecty”, would facilitate functionality merge
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Andrew [email protected]
support.unicon.net
Questions?