EDUCAUSE | Middleware

February CAMP Workshop: Register Before Jan. 2 for Low Rates

cluckett — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:44:46 -0600

Registration is now open for the Campus Architecture and Middleware Planning (CAMP) workshop, "Delivering, Sourcing, and Securing Services Throughout the Student Identity Life Cycle," February 4–6, in Tempe, Arizona.

Session topics include:

Student life cycle and provisioning of services
Access management and students at a distance
Identity-related technology and practice standards
Identifying and addressing duplicate records
Working together: Successful governance models
FERPA and sharing data with off-campus/outsourced service providers
Course and resource sharing among institutions (for example, federated identity)

Explore the program, and then register by January 2 to save money with low early-bird rates. Institutions are encouraged to send registrar, admissions, and IT teams to this CAMP to learn about these issues together and leave with next steps for furthering student services and identity management efforts back home.

CNI Podcast: nanoHUB.org: Future Cyberinfrastructure - An Interview with George B. Adams III

gbayne — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:57:26 -0500

This podcast features an interview with George B. Adams III, Associate Director for Programs, Network for Computational Nanotechnology at Purdue University. Our interview was recorded at the CNI 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

nanoHUB provides users with “fingertip access” to over 70 simulation tools for research and education. Users not only launch jobs that are executed on the state-of-the-art computational facilities of Open Science Grid and TeraGrid, but also interactively visualize and analyze the results--all via an ordinary Web browser. nanoHUB middleware hides the complexity of Grid computing, handling authentication, authorization, file transfer, and visualization, and letting the researcher focus on research. This approach also helps educators bring these tools to the classroom, letting them bypass the difficulties of Grid computing and focus instead on learning science and engineering.

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2008 Fall Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org

Register for CAMP Workshops on Shibboleth 2.0 and Distributed Services

cluckett — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:11:53 -0500

CAMP Shibboleth 2.0: Hands-on Technical Workshop
May 13-15 * Ann Arbor, Michigan
Advanced CAMP: Registering, Discovering, and Using Distributed Services in Academia
June 19-20 * Minneapolis, Minnesota

CAMP Shibboleth 2.0: Hands-on Technical Workshop (May 13-15)

The CAMP Shibboleth 2.0: Hands-on Technical Workshop will complement the June 2007 Shibboleth CAMP by providing attendees with technical installation and configuration experience with Shibboleth version 2.0. Developed for campuses new to Shibboleth and those with existing implementations interested in upgrading to the 2.0 release, the workshop will offer attendees the chance to:

Install prototype Shibboleth identity and service providers components in a virtual machine environment.
Hear tips for configuring and running the software in production.
Learn about integration with LDAP directories and selected packages.
Meet the Shibboleth Project Team and contribute to software development.
Knowledge of identity management concepts and related implementation experience is strongly recommended.

Advanced CAMP: Registering, Discovering, and Using Distributed Services in Academia (June 19-20)

Learn more about the issues in deploying web services and other service-oriented approaches for supporting distributed academic collaborations. The objective of this workshop is to discover the
leading functional and technical requirements for packaging, registering, and discovering scholarly services and the means of integrating them into new scholarly projects. Register now.

EDUCAUSE and Internet2 Receive NSF Grant to Develop Collaboration Tools

pkurkowski — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:27:48 -0600

The EDIT Consortium of EDUCAUSE and Internet2 has received a National Science Foundation grant for ongoing work in middleware, including identity and access management, and infrastructure that organizations use to verify and manage online user identity and access. See the EDIT Consortium for more information. Browse related identity management resources at EDUCAUSE Connect.

Registration Now Open for February CAMP: Bridging Security and Identity Management

cluckett — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:17:07 -0600

Designed for both management and technical staff, the Campus Architecture and Middleware Planning (CAMP) workshop, "Bridging Security and Identity Management," February 13-15 in Tempe, Arizona, will address practical approaches for addressing issues surrounding three themes:

Privacy and compliance
Threat and risk mitigation
Scalability

Each of these requires a bridge between security and identity management. Explore the program and register before January 11 to take advantage of low early-bird rates.

Note: Those arriving Tuesday morning or earlier may wish to participate in the Net@EDU Identity Management Working Group meeting occurring from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. before the workshop begins. All are welcome to attend (admittance is complimentary).

June CAMP Workshops to Focus on Shibboleth and Secure Collaboration

cluckett — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 12:18:36 -0500

Two upcoming CAMP workshops (detailed below) in Portland, Oregon, CAMP Shibboleth: Flexible Web-Based Authentication and Authorization and Advanced CAMP: Scaling Secure Collaboration, will focus on middleware deployment.

CAMP Shibboleth: Flexible Web-Based Authentication and Authorization

(June 25–27)
Overview: This CAMP will offer concrete practice and real-world experience from institutions running Shibboleth in production for controlling access to both on- and off-campus services. Participants will learn the answers to questions such as:

What is Shibboleth and how does it work?
What is the business case for it and how can I sell it on my campus?
What is the migration path to support intercampus Web SSO in the future?
How much identity management infrastructure do I need?
How can I use Shibboleth to simplify my application deployment and maintenance?

Higher education IT managers, project managers, middleware architects, and systems analysts involved at a technical, management, or stakeholder level in supporting Web-based services will benefit most from this workshop. Register before May 29 for low, early-bird rates.

Advanced CAMP: Scaling Secure Collaboration

(June 28–29)
Overview: This exploratory CAMP will bring together experts from across the research and education community to identify, clarify, and coordinate next steps to support collaborative activities within and among organizations. The focus will be on identity and access management services, such as federated authentication and group/privilege management, and their integration with applications and application suites.

Central campus IT strategists, technology architects, and those in related leadership roles will benefit most from this workshop. Register before May 29 for low, early-bird rates.

Browse related EDUCAUSE resources on Middleware and Identity Management.

EDUCAUSE2006 Podcast: NSF Middleware Initiative

Carie417 — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 16:32:36 -0500

In this 42-minute recording from the 2006 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, we'll hear from Thomas Barton and Michael Gettes in a session entitled NSF Middleware Initiative: Managing Identity on Campus. Sponsored by the NMI-EDIT Consortium of Internet2 and EDUCAUSE, this session explores the infrastructure needed and tools avaialble for managing identity data on campus.

The Wizard of SOA

smiltenb — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 13:09:26 -0600

I spent all day yesterday at an Oracle Fusion Middleware: Higher Education Oracle SOA Workshop. It was a great opportunity to get an introduction to SOA methodology and the Oracle toolset. In a past life (for about five minutes) I pretended to be a programmer and application developer (OK, even a DBA). But really, I just knew enough to break stuff.

The first part of the workshop was thrilling. I had one of those “a-ha” moments where suddenly everything you’re working on and technology finally align; and in that one perfect moment everything comes together in absolute clarity!

A few weeks ago we launched an initiative at Maryland Institute College of Art called “MICA Connected”. The goal of this two year project is to re-define our web presence and our web services – to connect all of our systems and processes in a way that is much more accessible to our communities -- and in a way that greatly improves our business and the services we offer. (Reminder: this is a blog. I work in the Technology department – not PR or Communications. This is my characterization of the project; not an official statement from Maryland Institute College of Art.)

Some key components to MICA Connected are:

Web site redesign (I hesitate to use the phrase “web site” because we’re really talking about every aspect of our web presence)
Oracle upgrades (Learning Solutions 8.1 to 9.0; Enterprise Portal 8.4 to 9.0; Financials 7.5 to 9.0 – all completed by June 2008)
Portal redesign (If you want to know more about the future of portals, come to Gettysburg College in June for a fantastic conference)

For more than a year, I’ve been absolutely convinced that this vision of MICA Connected is the direction we need to go in (from a technology perspective). However, I have such a minimal understanding (OK….no understanding) of the current tools and methodologies that can be used to make this a reality. My “a-ha!” moment came today when we were talking about SOA and standards based communications. The concept that components of our Oracle system (PeopleSoft Enterprise is what they’re calling it these days) can be exposed and accessible so that we can seamlessly integrate information into Blackboard, Resource25, our public website, WebTMA, Diebold and anything else we could hope for. In the first two hours of this class it was as if all the grand forces aligned to deliver a real solution to our goals.

I didn’t see it coming, and it was…of course…to good to be true.

The next four hours of the class were a lab where we got to build our own SOA services using data from an Oracle/PeopleSoft Learning Solution database. I cannot overstate the value of this kind of hands-on work. Even though we followed templates and utilized some shortcuts – the experience of building not one; not two; but three SOA applications in the lab environment was terrific. For me, however, this also paralleled Dorothy’s experience of seeing the wizard revealed.

Here’s what’s behind the curtain:

BPEL processes only work if you pay extra money to Oracle to license the BPEL process manager (or monitor or something like that. Yes, I KNOW you’ve already licensed their application server).
Oracle is touting SOA as this “change oriented” architecture – and I do get that. But those of you who have experience with PeopleSoft; hear me now: any SOA applications you develop are customizations. These programs exist outside your Oracle/PeopleSoft system, but presumably plug into those systems. What happens when Oracle changes your table definitions; or changes the underlying logic of their applications? It’s back to the drawing board for your developers – without any delivered tools to that alert you of the changes you’ll need to make in your SOA applications.
Remember workflow in PeopleSoft release 7.5?

Disclaimer: my comments are not reflecting those made by Oracle or any of its employees. They are my own distillations based on direct experience and feedback during the workshop. I’d appreciate any comments of correction.

I understand that software applications that build in “best practice” services don’t work for many institutions (we’re all unique, I know). SOA provides us with a great opportunity to really integrate systems and impose our unique business logic on our applications without violating the integrity of the underlying application.

But this is what I don’t get: a) we have to pay for it (licensing more products) and b) we have to develop it (and development of SOA applications seems overly complex to me)

Some of these questions may not matter to larger institutions who already have teams of developers/resources committed to integrations. But I think the impact on smaller institutions is significant. My initial reactions to SOA:

It is too complex! Not only does it require several smart and experienced people on your staff, it requires on-going care and feeding
The Oracle suite seems buggy and not integrated. I have no experience with any other SOA developer tools but we had problems in our lab because we didn’t save things at the right time – or we had to close and reopen our project to get things to work. There were at least three different logins that we needed to use in order to access all the components of application. That’s so Windows 95.
I don’t see how SOA is any more portable and adaptable than other architectures – sure the built-in accessible is huge. (I mean, HUGE). However, the code and programs are still dependent on all the underlying applications. In this respect, how different is it from Cold Fusion, SQR, Application Engine, HTML, etc.? If those underlying applications change, we still need to update our SOA (or Cold Fusion or SQR, or HTML) application.
And as far as tweaking or re-tooling applications, we made an error in one of our project components – yet we were allowed to build all the sub-components; save the project and only at run-time determine that there was a mistake. After fixing the initial mistake, we then realized that we had to fix all the sub-components (which had inherited the mistake, but not the fix) Hmmmpf!

I truly don’t know if this is my lack of understanding or an unrealistic expectation – but isn’t there an easier way? Shouldn’t our enterprise software vendors be providing us with more than just tools that we need pay additional license fees for; that require significant retraining and significant maintenance? How much do higher ed institutions spend on these systems, and shouldn’t it be reasonable to expect that vendors provide us with innovative, practical, manageable solutions that give us room to adapt to individual needs; but also include a basic set of operating principles? Isn’t is reasonable to expect that someone in my role – comfortable with technology and fairly savvy with the systems we’re using -- should be able to improve the way our systems perform business without having to create a project, dedicate a developer and dedicate several months for development?

Perhaps I’m just grumpy because I thought tools and technology finally caught up with my utopian notion of the way systems should serve businesses. I just can’t escape feeling disappointed and mislead that something really great was on the horizon – something that wouldn’t take us back; but would propel us forward.

Disagree? Tell me – tell me that I’ve got it all wrong and this is the reason why managers should never try to be techies! Or share your thoughts of commiseration….

An Interview with Douglas Van Houweling

mpasiewicz — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:55:08 -0500

The attached recording provides coverage of a 20 minute interview with Internet2 President and CEO, Douglas Van Houweling. Listen in as he shares thoughts on cybersecurity, cyberinfrastructure, CALEA, data curation and much more.

NSF Middleware 9th Release Now Available

ecoghlan — Thu, 04 May 2006 10:18:59 -0500

The NSF Middleware Initiative ninth release is now availablet o the public for downloading under open-source licenses. The release offers several new features for supporting online collaboration in a shared cyberinfrastructure environment, including event diagnostic, privilege management, and portal-building tools.