Technical Update

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Technical Update
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The Last Year

• Headline
• Requirements gathering
• Software development training
• Developers web site and demonstrator
• First cycle of design and implementation
• Behind the scenes
• Distributed working techniques and tools
• Java experience

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Software Development Process

• Identified need for development process
• Iconix
• Driven from use cases
• Books three days training
• Adopted development lifecycle
• Three iterations planned
• Using UML subset
• Rational rose

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Distributed Working Communications

• Developers web site
• Reference installation
• Managed by CVS
• Email list
• IRC weekly meetings
• Logged
• Face-to-face meetings
• At development milestones

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Distributed Working Software Development

• CVS
• Source code
• Build tools
• Web site
• Reference installation
• Standard build environment
• Ensured by Ant scripts
• Fetch dependant libraries
• Build code, and run tests
• Deploy application

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Open Source Software

• Many mature, supported packages available
• Core
• Ant
• Jetspeed
• Tomcat
• Various other products / libraries
• E.g. jzkit, hypersonic

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Packages

• Core
• Portal framework
• Authentication
• User profiling
• Portlets
• Cross searching
• Newsfeeds
• Alerting

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Portal Framework

• Jetspeed
• Apache open source java portal framework
• Handles user interactions
• Provides
• Personalisation
• Layout, portlet selection, etc.
• Portlet API
• JCP portal standards
• Build process
• Fetches, patches, configures and deploys

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Authentication

• Account management
• Local authentication
• National authentication
• Athens
• Single sign-on
• SPP plug-in authentication module developed
• Jetspeed patched to support it
• Authorization
• More later

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User Profiling

• Core back-end component
• Persistent storage
• Work ongoing but no demonstrator
• Hypersonic database at present
• Support for others planned

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Cross Searching

• Basic implementation
• Not integrated with User Profiling yet
• Four test Z39.50 targets configured
• COPAC, ZETOC, SOSIG and Biz/ed
• Back-end uses open source Jzkit
• Handles Z39.50 details
• Parallel searches
• Handles variety of record types
• Extensible using XSLT
• Xgrain

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Newsfeeds and Alerting

• Work ongoing but no demonstrator yet
• Dependencies on other packages
• Cross search, user profiling
• For now, using jetspeeds RSS portlet
• Some example feeds configured
• RDN News
• SOSIG whats new
• Etc

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Overview of Progress

• Almost completed first development cycle
• Created development infrastructure
• Built working development environment
• Working portal framework
• Stable portlet API
• UML design work started
• Work progressing on packages

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Plans

• Finish development cycle
• Test, document
• Review
• User testing
• Additional services
• Accessibility
• Integration with hubs
• Portlets without portal

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Summary

• Learning curve
• Use of UML
• Distributed working
• Groundwork
• Infrastructure in place
• Package work started
• Plenty left to do!

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Questions

• Any questions?
• Demonstrator address
• http//dev.portal.ac.uk/spp/
• Password protected