SakaiR: An open source platform for lightweight collaboration

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Sakai-R An open source platform for lightweight
collaboration

• Thomas A. Finholt
• School of InformationUniversity of Michigan

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Outline

• Collaborative Software
• Historical Context
• The Sakai Project
• MAE Cyberenvironment
• Going Forward

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1. Collaborative software

• As individuals, we are parts of many groups and
  have many roles in these groups
• Maintaining these collaborations is hard
• Death by email attachment
• Ideal solution
• Manage email, allow resource sharing, maintain
  common schedules, support persistent chat, wikis,
  blogs and do so in a single sign-on Web
  interface

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The collaboratory idea
people-to-people
Communication, Collaboration Services
groups-to- information
groups-to- facilities
Distributed, media-rich information technology
Digital libraries documents
Remote instruments
www.scienceofcollaboratories.org
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Imagine Software

• That could create a collaboratory in a few clicks
• Enroll/invite others to the collaboratory as
  necessary in a few more clicks
• Collaboratory capabilities
• Wiki
• blog
• E-Mail list
• Schedule
• Persistent browser-based chat
• Resource area to drag and drop files
• Threaded discussion
• Problem There are literally hundreds of
  solutions to portions of this problem.

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2. Historical context
MAEport
Ctools
Sakai
NEESGrid
CHEF
Science of Collaboratories
Worktools (Notes Based)
Coursetools (Notes Based)
SPARC
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What we learned in ten years

• Many (but not all) tools can be used for both
  teaching and learning and research collaboration
• Portal technology is a good idea - forces
  component approach
• Portals can be an application framework
• Separating functionality into components and
  pluggable services allows significant reusability

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While we were building collaboratories

• The Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) at MIT was
  launched
• Indiana, Stanford, MIT all developed course
  management system
• Java Community Process (JCP) produced JSR-168 - a
  unified portal standard API
• Oasis developed the Web Services for Remote
  Portals (WSRP) standard
• The open-source uPortal portal project quietly
  moved into the 1 open source portal (4
  including commercial vendors)

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3. Sakai project

• It is neither research nor teaching, it is all
  collaboration - many common tools
• Teaching Courses, tools, drop-boxes
• Research Putting a user interface on
  cyberinfrastructure

Teaching and Learning
Collaboration and Learning Environment
Collaboratories
www.sakaiproject.org
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Whats in a name?

• Sakai is named after Hiroyuki Sakai of the Food
  Channel Television program Iron Chef. Hiroyuki
  is renowned for his fusion of French and Japanese
  cuisine.

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Sakai origins

• Academic institutions
• Indiana
• Michigan
• MIT
• Stanford
• Berkeley
• Foothill-De Anza Community College District
• Toronto
• Hull
• Projects
• Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI)
• uPortal - JaSIG
• Funding (6.8M - 2 Years)
• Mellon Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Partners
  Program, Core member match

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Requirements Overlap
Grid Computing Visualization
Quizzes Grading Tools Syllabus SCORM
Physics Research Collaboration
Teaching and Learning
Data Repository
Chat Discussion Resources
Earthquake Research Collaboration
Large Data Libraries
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Sakai Product Placement
Teaching and Learning
Collaboration and eResearch
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Sakai General Collaborative Tools

• Announcements
• Wiki
• blogs
• Chat Room
• Threaded Discussion
• Email Archive
• Message Of The Day
• News/RSS
• Preferences
• Resources
• Schedule
• Web Content
• Worksite Setup
• WebDAV

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Additional General CollaborationTools Under
Development

• Shared Display
• Shared Whiteboard
• Multicast Audio
• Multicast Video

These are works-in-progress by members of the
Sakai eResearch community. There are no dates
for release.
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Sakai today

• Organized through a non-profit corporation
• Sakai Foundation
• Over 80 partner organizations
• Universities and colleges around the world
• Companies (e.g., IBM, Apple, Sun)
• Many production systems
• 35 K students at UM within two years
• 3 K faculty and student created collaboratories
  at UM
• Creation of Sakai-R
• Branch of code tree specifically oriented to use
  of Sakai for collaboratory development

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Advantages of Sakai-R

• Provides a unified user interface to
  cyberinfrastructure
• Open platform
• Interoperates with various security schemes
  (e.g., kerberos, x.509, kx.509, shibboleth)
• Interoperates with institutional repositories
• Provides a path for integration of teaching and
  research activity
• Ready-made environment for outreach

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4. MAE Cyberenvironment

• Transform the practice of disaster management
• Coupling basic research to applications in
  mitigation, response, and recovery
• Connecting distributed data, sensed information,
  computations, and expertise
• Coordinating of critical infrastructure planning
  to account for system interdependencies
• Connecting research scientist, engineers,
  decision makers, and practitioners through a
  community software platform

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MAE CyberenvironmentConsequence-Based Risk
Management
Mid-America Earthquake Center
Hazard Definition
Inventory Selection
No installationEasy maintenance/updates
Fragility Models
Latest information always available
Leverage technologyinvestments

• Portal-based Collaboration Environment
• Distributed Data/Metadata Sources
• Builds on NEESgrid Experience/Technologies and
  NCSAs ongoing efforts

Damage Prediction
Decision Support
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MAE Cyberenvironment infrastructure

• Collaboratory (Sakai-R UofM)
• Workflow Model
• v1.0 - D2K (data-to-knowledge)
• v2.0 (Eclipse extension point D2K, JOpera,
  Kepler, etc.)
• Remote Resource Store
• Scientific Annotation Middleware (SAM)
• WebDAV w/Metadata and Authentication
• Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning
  (WebDAV)
• A Web Standard for accessing a files system
  through http or https
• myProxy Single Sign-on (SSO) credential manager
• Remote Service Interfaces
• WIP - University of Texas Dynamic Traffic Model
• WIP - ARC SDE interface to HAZUS data
• WIP USGS/Land Use Portfolio Modeler

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Engaging the Community

• Begins with solid software development
  strategies
• Iterative user requirements workshops
• Spiral development
• Use-case driven
• Monitored/Managed Systems
• The community is quite broad
• Researchers world-wide
• FHWA, FEMA, IEMA, SCDOT, MoDOT, MLGW, FedEx,
  Memphis/Shelby County Airport,

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The MAE Cyberenvironment Community

• Community Driven
• Skinned for MAE Center
• News feeds relevant to earthquake scientists
• Linked to secure repository
• Single sign-on
• Access to specialized tools
• MAEviz

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MAE Cyberenvironment Scenarios

• Launch page for MAEviz
• Group Collection of Simulation Results

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Conclusions

• The MAE Cyberenvironment is a next-generation
  collaborative framework for earthquake
  engineering research
• The MAE Cyberenvironment represents a new era of
  seismic analysis and risk assessment
• The MAE Cyberenvironment application is web-based
  and sensitive infrastructure data can be secured
• The MAE Cyberenvironment is being developed by a
  top-notch team of MAE Center earthquake
  scientists, NCSA software engineers, and Sakai-R
  developers at UM
• The MAE Cyberenvironment is employing an
  iterative development strategy to meet
  stakeholder needs that combines assessment,
  development, deployment, and evaluation within
  each release cycle.

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MAE Cyberenvironment development team

• Bill Spencer IT Thrust Leader
• CEE at UIUC
• Shirley Dyke IT Thrust Co-Leader
• CE at WashU
• Jim Myers MAE Cyberenvironment Chief Architect
• NCSA at UIUC
• Terry McLaren MAE Cyberenvironment Project
  Manager
• NCSA at UIUC
• Chris Navarro MAEviz Lead Programmer
• NCSA at UIUC
• Nathan Tolbert MAE Cyberenvironment Research
  Programmer
• NCSA at UIUC
• Jong Sung Lee MAE Cyberenvironment GIS
  Programmer
• NCSA at UIUC
• Shawn Hampton MAE Cyberenvironment Research
  Programmer (50)
• NCSA at UIUC
• Terry Fluery MAE Cyberenvironment Security
  Programmer (50)
• NCSA at UIUC
• Tom Finholt MAE Cyberenvironment Collaboration
  Portal and HCI Coordinator

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5. Going forward

• Sakai-R is well-funded and well-coordinated
• Sakai is a community source activity and now
  is the time join the community
• Funding agencies and universities are very
  interested in applications that span learning and
  scholarly/research collaborations

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Collaboratory .vs. Portal

• Basic organization is about the thing it
  represents - Teragrid, NVO
• Site customization is based on the resource
  owners
• Sometimes there is an individual customization
  aspect
• Many small rectangles to provide a great deal of
  information on a single screen
• Portals think of rectangles operating
  independently - like windows
• Think Dashboard

• Basic organization is about the shape of the
  people and groups
• Customization based on the group leaders
• New groups form quickly and organically
• Doing one thing at a time - chat, upload -
  perhaps multiple active windows on a desktop
• Very interactive
• Think of navigation as picking a tool or
  switching from one project to another
• Think Application

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Sakai Gallery View
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Collaboratory .vs. Repository

• Many different systems may be active at the same
  time
• Systems evolve, improve, and are often replaced
  every few years
• Systems focused on the dynamic needs of users and
  applications
• Thousands of simultaneous online users
• Performance tuning
• Must be very easy to use almost unnoticeable
• Used informally hundreds of times per day per
  user
• Think E-Mail

• Generally one system for the area
• Long term strategic choice for institution
• System focused on accessing, indexing, curation,
  and storage
• Millions of high quality objects properly indexed
• Data and metadata quality
• Must enforce standards and workflow to insure
  data quality
• Most use is very purposeful search, publish, add
  value
• Think Library

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Sakai Repository Approach

• Move Sakai and other Collaboration systems toward
  RDF
• Experiment with using RDF as native storage
  format
• High Performance RDF - Fedora testing - 180M
  tuples - complex queries - 70ms
• Move data repositories toward RDF
• Move from schema-based stovepipe objects to
  OWL/RDF based objects with referential integrity
• Explore dimensions of portability of disseminator
  / lenses - this is an important research area
• Get started immediately.

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Fedora Images
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Relevant URLs

• sakaiproject.org
• maeviz.cee.uiuc.edu
• si.umich.edu
• ncsa.uiuc.edu
• mae.cee.uiuc.edu