uPortal 2 Status

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uPortal 2 Status

• Bill Thompson, Rutgers
• Andrew Petro, Yale

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Software Maintenance and Evolution

• The majority of development takes place after
  the software has seen its first release is
  known as software maintenance (or software
  evolution)
• Special Issue on Software Maintenance and
  Evolution, IEEE Transactions on Software
  Engineering, October 2005

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uPortal release process

• Patch releases (frequent, no APIs change, uPortal
  2.4.4)
• Minor evolutionary releases (periodic, some APIs
  change where needed, uPortal 2.6)
• Major revolutionary releases (rare, huge, uPortal
  3)

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Kinds of releases

• Milestone just a build. Provide a way to talk
  about and see progress, a goal.
• Release candidate A build for QA and review
  working towards a GA release.
• GA release General audience or General
  availability releases a final release
  intended for deployers.

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uPortal 2.4.x

• Patches

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uPortal 2.4.x strategy

• The 2.4.x release strategy has been to
• fix reported issues
• increase portal performance and stability
• share fixes/optimizations with later release
  branches
• incorporate important fixes/optimizations from
  later releases

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2.4.x releases

• August 2005 uPortal 2.4.3
• Memory and performance
• October 2005 uPortal 2.4.3.1
• Security release to fix CWebProxy proxies too
  much issue.
• Expected December 2.4.4
• Bug fixes, JDK 1.5 support

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uPortal 2.5.x

• Patches

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uP 2.5.x releases

• uPortal 2.5.1
• CWebProxy security fix
• Dynamic channel titles
• Expected in December uPortal 2.5.2
• Bugfixes and release process engineering

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CWebProxy security fix

• In uPortal 2.4.3.1 and 2.5.1

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Proxying too much

• Exploit allowed the Adversary to proxy arbitrary
  files on the portal filesystem as the Tomcat
  user, e.g. your uPortal configuration files
  including database passwords.

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The fix

• Restrict what paths can be set at runtime.

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On Reporting Security Exploits

• uPortal is an opensource project.
• Our strength is, we thrive on, open
  communication, sharing
• But security exploits are special
• Lets not share them until theyre fixed.
• In progress new reporting process

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uPortal 2.6

• Evolution

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DLM enhancements

• uPortal 2.5 welcomed DLM into baseline uPortal
• uPortal 2.6 will include enhancements to DLM in
  the way managed fragments are managed

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Fine grained permission grants

• Delegating permission to publish channels to a
  subset of portal users.

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The on-going community process

• Community means you.

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Many ways to contribute

• Many thanks to Vincent Mathieu for stepping up to
  produce quickstarts.

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Use cases
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JIRA issue tracker

• Bugfixes, new features, enhancements
• Patches
• Screenshots
• Scheduling

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Connection to next-generation portal
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What are the requirements?

• What are you looking for from your next uPortal
  upgrade?

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Evolution

• Our Release Process accommodates evolutionary
  change for minor releases.
• Some of these requirements therefore can be
  realized for uP 2.6, etc.

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Revolution

• What are the killer features that make a major,
  revolutionary upgrade worth it?

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Your participation needed

• Identify requirements
• Define use cases
• And implement!