Sakai VRE Portal Demonstrator

1
Sakai VRE Portal Demonstrator

• Mark Baker
• School of Systems Engineering,
• University of Reading Tel [phone]
  E-mail Mark.Baker_at_computer.org
• Web http//acet.rdg.ac.uk/mab

2
Outline

• Introduction.
• Deliverables.
• Recent Contributions
• Daresbury,
• Lancaster,
• Oxford,
• Reading.
• Summary and Conclusions.

3
Introduction

• A collaboration between
• Objectives
• To provide a working VRE demonstrator, based on
  the Sakai portal, to introduce the concept,
  capabilities and benefits to scientists.
• To engage with scientist by providing a
  frequently updated VRE environment to
• Play, learn and gain experience,
• Support projects.

CCLRC Daresbury Rob Allan
University of Reading Mark Baker
University of Oxford Mike Fraser
Lancaster University Rob Crouchley
4
Deliverables

• Sakai Collaboration Tools
• Schedule
• Resources
• Web Content
• Chat
• Discussion
• E-Mail
• New Sakai Tools
• LDQ Upload
• Whiteboard
• CopperCore
• IRC
• Wiki
• Audio Conferencing
• Resource Search
• CREE Information Tools
• JAFER
• GetRef
• HEIRPORT

• Grid Tools
• MDS LDAP Browser
• Grid
• Proxy Manager
• Job Submission
• Job monitor
• FTP
• Other Portlets
• NaradaBrokering Conferencing
• Semantic Search
• Grid Markets Tools
• Negociation Client
• Payment Service Client
• Data Management Tools
• SRB
• OGSA-DAI
• Service Registry
• UDDI publish/ discovery
• Dynamic WSDL Interface

5
Sakai VRE Portal Demonstrator

• Recent Work

6
Daresbury

• Public demonstrator (http//rhine.dl.ac.uk8080/po
  rtal) - login -- guestguest
• Demonstrator running on Oracle hosted by NGS.
• WSRP consumer developed and tested (see ?).
• Communication with Microsoft Exchange being
  tested.
• Tool under development for conference paper
  management (upload, edit, review).
• Sakai is hosting content for a number of projects
  and approx 200 users.

7
Lancaster

• Lancaster Blogger Tool
• Version 1 of the blogger has been released to the
  Sakai community for site testing
• https//source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/blogger.
• It can be checked out of Sakai Subversion
  repository.
• When the blogger has been tested at enough Sakai
  sites it will be moved from the contrib area to
  the live area and will be an active part of every
  default Sakai installation in the world.
• More information or for a trial e-mail Adrian
  Fish or Miguel Gonzalez at Lancaster

8
Lancaster

• Video Conferencing Tool
• A single tool offers audio and video conference,
  distributed whiteboard, share your desktop and
  broadcast movies.
• The conferencing tool is approaching a first
  release stage.
• Most of the features that we want are in and we
  are now eliminating bugs and writing developer
  and user documentation.

9
Oxford

• Integrated WebAuth with Shibboleth.
• Documented the integration
• http//wiki.oss-watch.ac.uk/ShibbolethInstallNotes
  .
• http//wiki.oss-watch.ac.uk/SakaiVre/ShibbolethWeb
  AuthIntegration.
• Installed SAKAI.
• Documented SAKAI configuration
• http//wiki.oss-watch.ac.uk/SakaiNotes.
• Working on Shibboleth SAKAI integration
• http//sakai-vre-demo.oucs.ox.ac.uk/portal.
• Investigating user attributes for searching
• Allows us to make educated guesses about what
  kinds of things users are likely to be searching
  for, what kinds of tools and vocabularies they're
  expecting to be able to use to search.

10
Reading

• Integrating Legacy Applications into a Portal
• Investigated whether script-based Web
  applications, such as PHP can be used in a J2EE
  environment,
• Investigated how PHP applications can be reused
  as portlets,
• Deployed and tested a number of PHP applications
  as portlets,
• Will add useful tools to the Sakai Demonstrator,
• Report on experiences can be found at
• http//dsg.port.ac.uk/projects/VRE/docs.php.

11
Reading

• Bridging Technologies
• JSR-223
• Allows Java to communicate objects with
  script-based languages and vice versa,
• To be included with the next release of Sun JDK
  Mustang.
• PHP-JavaBridge
• Described as a XML-based network protocol,
• Allows communications between Java and PHP,
• Provides a suitable environment to execute PHP
  scripts under Apache Tomcat.
• PortletBridge-Portlet
• Renders Web pages into a JSR-168 portlet,
• Proxies links and other external resources
  contained in a Web page,
• Can load multiple instances, with different
  configurations.

12
Reading
13
Summary

• All partners making good progress.
• Deploying and supporting Sakai at a number of
  sites.
• Beginning to more fully understand the needs of
  the VRE user community.
• E-Social Science Use Case study underway
• Want to understand exactly what tools and
  services the user community need.
• Keen to get user groups and the wider community
  engaged and gather more feedback.
• Organising Portals and Portlet workshop next week
  at NeSC
• http//www.grids.ac.uk/twiki/bin/view/EResearch/Po
  rtalsProgramme