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.

1. Ick! Marketing!

2. Component Listing

3. Context

4. Announcements

5. Email Preview Portlet

6. toro-channels

7. toro-portlets

8. Next steps

This is not a marketing slide deck

• At least, it is my intent that it not be.

• Purpose

– Raise awareness of opportunities

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.

But…

• These contributions are pretty interesting

too…

2: Component Listing

What open source activities are we

talking about?

San Jauquin Delta College

• Columbia Announcements USC

Announcements Delta College

Announcements branch

• Email Preview Portlet

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

“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…

OpenToro

• toro-channels

– IChannels and framework

• toro-portlets

– portlets

• toro-sdk and toro-resource-pool

– utilities

toro-channels

• http://code.google.com/p/toro-channels/

toro-channels

• Classifieds

• News

• Collaborative

Groupware course

management system

• Survey

• Calendar

• Bookmarks

• Gradebook

• LDAP password change

• Notepad

• Notification

• Permissions Admin

toro-channels

• Eve performance-enhanced local group store

• “CSCR” client-side channel rendering

technology – asynchronous channel

rendering using frames

Toro-portlets

• http://code.google.com/p/toro-portlets/

• Gateway SSO (single sign on)

• Briefcase (file sharing)

• Messaging / Notifications

• Permissions management meta-portlet

Toro-sdk

• http://code.google.com/p/toro-sdk/

toro-resource-pool

• Predates Commons DBC, etc.

• Nice debugging / logging facilities

Context

Putting this stuff in the open source is

neato, but why are you doing it?

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

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

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.

Why Google Code?

• Path of least resistance

• Cheap, easy, and fun

• SVN source control

• Issue tracker

• Wiki

• Downloads

• Online account, committership management

Announcements

USC_Announcements++

• Columbia USC

– HTML announcement content

• USC SJDC Announcements

– Alerts, multiple instantiability,

San Jaoquin Delta CollegeEmail Preview Portlet

Email Preview Portlet

Announcements

Email preview portlet

EPP In Google Code Hosting

• http://code.google.com/p/email-preview-portlet/

– Wiki

– Issue tracking

– Downloads

– SVN source control

toro-channels

Calendar

Rich Calendar event model

Day, Week, Month views

Poll

Surveys have pages

Pages have questions

Questions have details

Publishing the Survey

Analyze Survey Results

Theme

Left Hand Info Bar

Client-side channel rendering

toro-portlets

Notifications Portlet

Notifications Portlet

Briefcase Portlet

Briefcase portlet

Briefcase Portlet Personal Files

Briefcase Portlet shared files

Sharing Folders through Briefcase

Gateway SSO

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

Password caching

Portal

Channel

Channel

Channel

Password-protectedservice

Password-protectedservice

Password-protectedservice

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

Gateway SSO Portlet

Portal

Portal

Portal

Portal

Password-protectedwebsite

Password-protectedwebsite

Password-protectedwebsite

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

PWPW

toro-portlets

• Briefcase Portlet

– Put and get files

– File sharing

– File system binding

– API for adding new file stores (e.g. WebDAV)

Next Steps

Opportunities

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.

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

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

Survey channel

• Sales tells me the toro-channels Survey

channel is competitive

• uPortal could likely use a good survey facility

• Is this it?

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

Calendar

• Hey Rutgers, how ‘bout that iCal/xCal

rendering channel???

• But: Bedework, Zimbra, Chandler, …

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

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

Andrew Petroapetro@unicon.net

support.unicon.net

Questions?

Discussion.