The Sakai VRE Demonstrator

Rob Crouchley, Adrian Fish and Miguel GonzalezE-Science Centre, and Collaboratory for Quantitative e-Social

Science, University of Lancaster

Rob Allan and Xiaobo YangE-Science Centre, CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory

Mark Baker and Rahim LakhooDistributed Systems Group, University of Portsmouth

Matthew Dovey, Stuart Yeates, Graham Kline and Francisco Pinto

Research Technology Services, University of Oxford

Sakai Collaboration & Research/Learning Environment

Portal

Res 1

Discussion,Video Confand VOIP

ResourceDiscovery

E-Collaboration Portlets

Res 2 Res 3 Res 4

GE DBMSGE

Statistical Analysis

Quantitative Methods Portlets

Res 5 Res 6

Sakai

• Sakai is open source, it’s the hosting framework of choice for VLE and VRE development in the USA;

• Big investment from Mellon Foundation and Ivy League Universities ($6.8M);

• Close collaboration with uPortal developers• Makes use of OKI OSIDs and latest Java technology• The Sakai Tool Portability Profile (TPP) -

Describes how to write tools and services so that they are portable across Sakai systems.

Sakai Roadmap

• Sakai 1.0 - basic collaborative system - suitable for small pilots (June 2004)

• Sakai 1.5 - basic collaborative learning system - suitable for significant pilot’s, (Dec 2004)

• Sakai 2.0 - collaborative learning system - suitable for significant production deployments, (June 2005), – 2.1 release due Nov 2005 will have a WSRP producer.

• Sakai 3.0 - hardening, portal integration (WSRP & JSR-168), possible JSP and/or JYTHON

WP1b: Extending the Authentication Framework

Security framework for VREs based on Shibboleth (Oxford perspective)

Web Services in Sakai

• Based on Axis 1.2• Release 2.0 includes

sample PHP client

Web ServicesClient

Jakarta Axis

Sakai APIs

Sakai Kernel

WS End Point

WP1c: Consuming Web Services

Text Field to enter WSDL location

Drop Down Menu for Services & Operations

Buttons to Analyse and Add WS

JTree for adding WS, with user interaction

Display Message content for WS Operation Call

Work by Asif Akram (Daresbury) using Swing. June 2005.

WSRP

• WSRP is now the key technology for linking Sakai tools into portals (Sakai currently only a WSRP producer but not consumer)

• WSRP consumers include uPortal, StringBeans, eXo Portal, Swing (WSRP4J)

• We want to consume a WSRP exported service (e.g. CREE) in Sakai.

Does Sakai Need Some Adapters?

• TPP adapter for WS – We can add a TPP layer to the WS interfaces generator

already developed

• TPP adapter for WSRP– WSRP4J used to provide bridge from WSRP to JSR-168

• TPP adapter for JSR168– WSRP4J used to provide bridge from JSR168 to WSRP– We are evaluating which of these approaches would be the most feasible

• TPP adapter for Z35.50 and SRW– Work has been done in the CREE project which we are

evaluating

If we had a WSRP Consumer TPP…

WSRP

Project-specific portal tools developed in JSR-168

Project-specific worksites in SakaiUser’s aggregate

view of his/ her projects

WSRP Image

WP2: So what Tools are we working with?

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

Grid Tools• MDS LDAP Browser • Grid Proxy Manager • Grid Job Submission • Grid Job monitor • Grid FTP • InfoPortal Other Portlets• Narada Conferencing• Semantic SearchGrid Markets Tools• Negociation Client• Payment Service Client Data Management Tools• SRB• OGSA-DAIService Registry• UDDI publish/ discovery• Dynamic WSDL InterfaceSupport Tools• Certificate Upload • Desktop FTP

New Sakai VRE Tools : Demos Available from Lancaster CoE

Booth during Coffee Breaks

• Blog

• Whiteboard

• Resource Searcher

• Audio and Video Conference

• Shared Display

Blog• A blog is an online journal. They can be considered as limited

online publishing systems. They are commonly used to store development notes and can be searched by anybody with access rights.

White Board

• The whiteboard is a distributed sketchpad and uses Narada Brokering to route drawing events to interested participants. Each authenticated worksite user can start sketching and will receive sketches from others.

Resource Searcher

• A simple, but effective, way of searching for documents amongst the resources attached to the current worksite.

Audio and Video Conference• Worksite user's can create a conference (using the ConferenceService) and

add participants from the pool of registered worksite users. The conference starts immediately and participants join as they login and start the tool. The conference tool uses RTP and applets to capture/playback audio and video. Uses ports>8000.

Shared Display• With this tool, worksite users can work on a document collaboratively.• One user acts as a producer of a display and simply drags a cursor over ANY desktop application

they have running. The producer applet then starts capturing the application image and sending it to a JMS topic hosted on the Narada broker. Any other interested worksite users can then consume the display using the consumer applet. When used in conjunction with the audio tool the shared display can make collaborative editing (even programming) relatively painless.

WP3: Sakai Demonstrator and Services

Production Server:• Sakai 2.0 on IBM BladeCenter server at DL with Oracle

9i on NGS node at RAL. Moving to 2.1 with WSRP producer soon.

Development:• Sakai 1.51 or 2.0 with MySQL/Oracle at other sites.

Dissemination and Status:• Current Web site is at http://www.grids.ac.uk/Sakai• List of tools and status is at http://www.grids.ac.uk

/Sakai/Tools

WP4: Community, Evaluation and Support

Community:

1. GROWL; Sakai VRE; CQeSS; NWGrid Tech Board; NWGrid Ops Board; ReDRESS Steering Committee;

2. NGS portal; Integrative Biology, e-HTPX;3. ReDRESS portal developers and users; WSRP

and portal framework evaluations.

The sites have a total of around 140 users.

We want to extend the Community,

We are happy to offer guest accounts to anyone who would like to play with Sakai and the tools we have added, (come to the Lancaster CoE Booth)

End