Kuali Rice Overview January 2008 Aaron Godert - Cornell University

What is Kuali Rice? Kuali: a humble kitchen wok; Malaysian origins Rice: it is what it is Sits on the bottom of a dish Not a very tasty meal by itself Better with some substance on top KFS - Beef KRA - Chicken KS - Seafood Rice is the foundation to a hearty software product

The Goals for Rice The board vision for Kuali is a plug and play module by module approach to software Kuali started as financials, but has evolved into a suite of administrative software (KFS, KRA, KS) A lot of functionality in Kuali systems Keeping the Kuali code base as small as possible without impacting quality is key Highly productive development environment For Kuali projects For non-Kuali projects

Rice Goals Cont. A common and consistent architecture Allow developers to understand other rice enabled projects Infrastructure would not need to be reinvented on each project - focus on functionality! Rice team can focus on IT standards, like SOA, that will benefit the entire Kuali software suite Adoption of other Kuali modules feasible Generic enough for non-Kuali applications

Rice is Middleware Made up of several, possibly standalone and swappable, middleware components Applications become a “Rice Client Application” by easily integrating with this middleware Interaction with other Rice enabled applications becomes seamless

How We Got Here Kuali Enterprise Workflow (KEW) existed in production at Indiana University Kuali Finanical System (KFS) started development and had an architecture team Morphed into the Kuali Nervous System (KNS) team Achieve technical consistency across all aspects of KFS KFS --> KNS --> KEW

Along Came KRA Kuali Research Administration (KRA) needed to integrate with KFS Align our core to support sharing services across Kuali apps in a loosely coupled fashion All Kuali products should be technically consistent under the hood For end user functionality For different development methodologies

Thinking Outside of the Wok Most administrative applications have a common need for middleware services Workflow ESB Notification Avoid design and code duplication Consolidate configuration

Rice Was Born!

Rice Modules (Products) KEWKuali Enterprise Workflow KNSKuali Nervous System KSBKuali Service Bus KENKuali Enterprise Notification KIM Kuali Identity Management KOM Kuali Organization Management We should take a look at the history of each of these products before talking in more detail how they apply to Rice

The History of KEW Kuali Enterprise Workflow existed at Indiana University as a stand alone integration project before Kuali began Provided common engine to drive business processes electronically When Kuali came along, the IU workflow engine became Kuali Enterprise Workflow (KEW)

The History of KNS KFS spent a large amount of development time up front, using the best talent from each of the partner institutions Came up with a foundation on which to build KFS - the Kuali Nervous System It focused on a unified approach to development of functionality A standard way to use workflow, perform CRUD operations, handle business transactions KNS extracted into Rice as a module

The History of the KSB Other Kuali projects came along: i.e. KRA They needed to be able to seamlessly “talk” to other Kuali services/applications in real time Reducing the need for offline batch Increasing business process agility The KSB was born to satisfy simple needs

The History of KEN Cornell University recognized the need for a more general notification system that could work alongside of a workflow “to-do” list Started development of the notification system at Cornell Recognized the synergy in leveraging KEW Realized that Kuali applications also wanted an advanced model for end user communication The concept of Kuali Enterprise Notification was born

The (short) History of KIM KFS has its own user tables that are specific to financial data Also has groups, roles, permissions KEW has its own users, groups, roles, permissions When KEN was built, it piggy-backed on KEW’s users, groups, and roles

The (short) History of KIM Cont. KRA came along with similar needs as KFS KS is also gearing up and shows similar needs with additional requirements Recognized the potential for re-use and the need for context specific IdM data Most importantly, we recognized the need for consistent service interfaces across projects The concept of Kuali Identity Management was born

The (short) History of KOM KOM will address the unit hierarchy/org chart needs of KFS/KRA/KS Came out of functional integration committee

Why Does a Project Need Rice? KNS and KEW enhance developer productivity and enforce standards KSB provides an SOA approach for cross project interoperability KEN enhances the user experience while fulfilling a general need for notification across all rice enabled applications KIM provides consistent IdM across your projects KOM provides consistent Org mgmt across your projects

The Rice Interactive Diagram Available at Click anywhere on the diagram to begin Click on any component for details

Rice Deployment Architectures Stand-alone: a central hub and spoke model Good if you just want to support one Rice server Centralized services and features Best for non-Java clients Embedded: a decentralized, federated approach Fast for developers because services are local Distributes load; technically a clustered model Provides distributed transactions (via JTA) Hybrid: best of both

Kuali Rice - Current Status Public release available at --> Download KRA is using KFS is using Well tested Rice is being used in KFS; released with KFS 2.0 Both unit and functionally tested with JUnit/HtmlUnit Continuous Integration: Let's take a closer look at each of these pieces in more detail

KSB Overview - The Goals 1. Enable applications and services deployed on the bus to interact with other applications and services 2. Provide (a)synchronous communication 3. Provide flexible security 4. Provide Quality of Service (QoS) 5. Keep it simple (light weight)

KSB Overview Cont. A common registry of services Lists all services on the bus and how they can be connected Through simple Spring configuration, Java based services can be “exported” from a rice enabled application as SOAP or HttpRemoted services Common resource loading - access services remotely or locally Other “Rice Clients” can connect to any of the services on the KSB

KSB Communication Models Synchronous = P2P : waits for a response Asynchronous = messaging : fire and forget : possible callback Queues = single service retrieved from redundant set of services; only one invoked Topics = all services retrieved from redundant set of services; all invoked

KSB Security Bus level : option to digitally sign, encrypt Service level security through Acegi Service level, method level User proxying through standard security models (i.e. CAS, Kerberos) Security context passed along (user, authn token, roles) Services can call authn/authz authority to validate context

KSB is Simple and Light Weight Evaluated ServiceMix, ActiveMQ, Mule a year and a half ago Reliability issues then, better now though For simple needs (SOAP and Spring HttpRemoting), the messaging components of KEW sufficed in combination with XFire and Spring Kuali Student has greater needs from an ESB (WSDL first, process orchestration, etc) Are looking to KS ESB team for the direction to go

KNS Overview Provides reusable code, shared services, integration layer, and a development strategy Provides a common look and feel through screen drawing framework A document (business process) centric model with workflow as a core concept

Understanding the KNS Paradigm CHART_T Chart (POJO) ORM Mappin g Data Dictionary Lookups and Inquiries Maintenance Documents Transactional Documents Workflow (KEW)

Transactional Documents These are data-entry centric documents or “transactions” that model the business processes Examples include: Proposal Development, Journal Entry, Payment Reimbursement Built on a case by case basis using the Kuali Rice tag libraries (encompass snippets of UI behavior): Notes and attachments Workflow route log (audit log) Integrated with workflow

Maintenance Documents They do not need to be built case by case - just one JSP that draws them all These are the CRUD documents - an easy way to maintain support tables in a Kuali database C: Create new table records R: Read or query table records U: Update existing table records D: Delete existing table records Examples include: Budget rates Project codes

Inquiries A way to drill down and get more read-only information about a table record

Inquiry Screenshot

Inquiry Example Configuration Travel Account Inquiry

Lookups A way to search for data by a set of criteria Results of lookups can be returned to other lookups or documents

Lookup Screenshot

Lookup Example Travel Account Lookup Look up Inst.

Lookup Example Cont. <lookupField attributeName="foId" required="false" forceLookup="true" />

Other KNS Features Data Dictionary Question component Notes and attachments Pluggable business rules Pluggable authorizations System parameters Extended/custom attributes

KEW Overview Facilitates routing and approval of business processes throughout an organization Provides re-usable routing rule creation which defines how business processes should be routed Bind business data to users/groups that must approve Provides hooks for client applications to handle workflow lifecycle events of business processes End users interact with central workflow GUIs for all client applications

Document Search Screen Shot

Action List Screen Shot

Route Log Screen Shot

KEN Overview Works with the action list to provide a single place for all university related communications Workflow items come from KEW Non-workflow items from KEN Non-workflow example items Overdue library book A concert on campus Graduation checklists for seniors

KEN Overview Cont. Provides a secure and controlled environment for notifying the masses Eliminate sifting through Communication broker which provides any combination of action list, text messages, , etc. Controlled by user preferences Audit trail for all messages just as in KEW

KEN: Sending Notifications S2S: A developer can send notifications by: Calling the sendNotification() service on the KSB Invoking the service via a SOAP WS (exposed by the KSB) Manual: A user can send notifications using a provided workflow enabled form

KEN Screenshot: My Notifications

KEN Screenshot: Notification Details

KIM Overview Just gearing up Keep it simple to start Goals: Clean and consistent service interfaces used by all Kuali apps; generic enough for non-Kuali apps Leverage KNS to provide a reference implementation for services; workflow enabled management application Flexibility for dynamic attributes associated with IdM entities (persons, groups, roles, etc) Pluggable support for Internet2 products (Grouper, etc)

KIM Overview Cont. Basic concepts Namespace (i.e. Application, any generic context) Person - different default “sponsored” attributes for each namespace context; core shared attributes as well Group - simply groups users; arbitrary data associated with them

KIM Overview Cont. Permissions - ability to perform actions Roles - cross context capabilities; aggregates permissions (i.e. fiscal officer, dean, etc) Qualified Roles - specific to a context fiscal officer for organization XYZ dean for the College of ABC administrators for the College of ABC <-- this one’s a group

KOM Overview Basic concepts Namespace - scopes the trees Organization - XYZ Department, College of ABC, University of EFG Organization Category - University, College, Department, Club, etc Parent/Child Organization

What’s Next? Looking to the Future… Rice components will piggy back on each other KEW and KEN will use KNS to draw screens, etc. Standards JSR 186/286 portlets for user interfaces (portals) BPEL for process orchestration JPA for data persistence (move to Hibernate) WS-* support Easier configuration and turnkey upgrades Light weight service interfaces (WSDL, XSD) Open source ESB foundation for KSB

The main Rice web site Sign up for our public mailing list Access to our wiki: roadmap, project plans, documentation, etc Documentation is a weakness About the website

That’s it! Q & A