Portals, Desktop Applications and Distributed Services for e-Research Sakai VRE Demonstrator – progress July’05 Portals, Desktop Applications and Distributed Services for e-Research - Updated vision - Rob Crouchley and Rob Allan With thanks to Chuck Severance

The original Vision

Personal Learning/Research Environment PLREs and All That! Vision following the JISC-CETIS workshop in Oxford presented by Chuck Severance Personal Learning/Research Environment Requirements VLE VRE IE If we focus on what the user wants to see, it all becomes a single “desktop” The Personal Learning/ Research Environment (PLRE) effectively adds a “productivity” layer to the VLE/VRE/IE space which unifies the look/feel/usability across the multiple sources of information

Someday the PLRE will not be just a browser Desktop Apps have: Better user experience Increased productivity But: More complex to build Difficult to keep up with changing technology a. pure HTML Web page b. Web page based, but with browser enhancements c. browser extension d. dedicated desktop network client e. extensible desktop application platform f. common desktop application

E-Research Framework Choices Portal Software: uPortal, GridSphere, Liferay, StringBeans, Jetspeed2, JBOSS, eXo Platform We are evaluating these in a collaboration with Jason Novotny and will produce a technical report JSR-168 portlets have been demonstrated to be portable between frameworks .NET not yet evaluated Digital Repository Software: Fedora, Dspace, Plone Collaborative Software: Sakai, Sharepoint, NaradaBroker, Lotus Notes, OpenOffice ? Web Services and loose coupling are helping us to realise the vision. Say you are starting an E-Research project, what software should you use?

Linking Sakai to the Desktop Work by Chuck Severance (Michigan) using Visual Basic. July 2005.

Consuming Web Services Text Field to enter WSDL location Buttons to Analyse and Add WS Drop Down Menu for Services & Operations JTree for adding WS, with user interaction Display Message content for WS Operation Call Work by Asif Akram (Daresbury) using Swing. June 2005.

Dynamic Swing Form created for testing WS Prototype can handle very complex and composite data types

Adding Different WS and SOAP Message Different WS added and populated drop down menu Contents of SOAP Method Call

Extending the Authentication Framework Add Francisco’s Shibboleth picture.

New Vision Common Services Common Services JSR-168, WSRP Portlet Portlet Portlet SOAP, WSDL, UDDI Service Service Service Common Services Common Services

Same view from Sakai! Portal Non-Sakai Tool Non-Sakai Non-Java Tools WSRP WSRP WSRP WSRP HTTP HTTP HTTP Sakai Sakai Sakai tool tool tool tool tool tool

So what tools are we working with? Grid Tools Grid Job monitor MDS LDAP Browser Grid Proxy Manager Grid Job Submission Grid FTP InfoPortal Grid Markets Tools Negociation Client Payment Service Client Data Management Tools SRB OGSA-DAI Service Registry UDDI publish UDDI discovery Dynamic WSDL Interface Support Tools Certificate Upload Desktop FTP Sakai Collaboration Tools Schedule Resources Web Content Chat Discussion New Sakai Tools LDQ Upload Whiteboard CopperCore IRC Wiki CREE Information Management Tools JAFER GetRef HEIRPORT Google