CHEF CSG May 7, 2003 Joseph Hardin Collaborative Technologies Lab Media Union & School of Information University of Michigan

University Missions CourseTools – a first-generation course management system WorkTools – part of a series of efforts in building systems for support of scientific research teams These two paths have a lot in common, as instances of collaboration support systems, and have led to: CHEF – A framework for building the next generation of both systems

UM.CT Custom course page presented to each student

Students working off campus often run into difficulty because their browser or dial-in service is not correctly configured. UM.CT Help for Remote Users

Support for Work Groups UM.Worktools Scientific Research Groups Science Review Teams Technology Design Teams Currently over 5500 users worktools.si.umich.edu

Adoption of CT/WT CT Users - Saturating WT Users – Accelerating CT Use - Deepening Over 35,000 We see these as foundation efforts in understanding and building “Knowledge Work Support Systems” for UMich faculty, students and staff, and remote collaborators. Over 9,000

So, CHEF as Next Step(s)

CourseTools: Assignments Quizzes … Worktools: ToDo list Data Access … Teleobservation – NEES Informatics/MetaData - CMCS Shared Core Features: Logon File upload Announcements Discussion Chat Schedule Mail archive … Gradebook CAPA Quizzes DissertationTool OKI APIs CHEF Technology Leveraging Education/Research Complementarities

Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation

CHEF node CoG XML CoG XML Grid CHEF and the Grid – Access to Globally Distributed Computing Resources Moving to GRID services model (OGSA) as it develops. And it did last Wednesday…

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Resources

CMCS is enabled by broad collaboration Development partnerships cut across offices and agencies Collaborations also include CCA, SDM ISICS. A collaboration of eight national labs and universities span chemical scales Collaboration opportunities for future –Xportlets work at Indiana University –Portal web Services –NeesGrid work at University of Michigan SAM

CMCS Explorer is a data management tool for accessing data across DAV resources. The default address in CMCS Explorer for My Workspace is the path to your personal data folder. In a team workspace, the default address points to the team’s data folder. CMCS Explorer shows tree and file views, can spawn viewers and tools for specific files, and has search, notification and pedigree capabilities.

Current Implementation

Pedigree Browsing in CHEF The Browser enables metadata editing. Data is linked to projects, references, inputs, and outputs

Automatic Translation and Metadata Extraction Data translations provided automatically by SAM using previously registered XSLT’s for this file type.

Pedigree Graph in CMCS Pedigree graph provides a two-dimensional visualization of a data resource and all of its relationships. Users can easily see the relationships without following all pedigree links.

Data + Metadata Metadata allows the creation of revolutionary new types of collaborative chemical science projects, coordinating research efforts across chemical scales. Metadata dramatically increases accessibility of state-of- the-art research knowledge to industry and the public. CMCS data repository with pedigree tracking provides a new means for evaluating research claims. CMCS pedigree graphing provides a visual representation of data relationships. CMCS metadata supports allows scientific peer review of electronic data, which is important to groups like IUPAChem. CMCS metadata is extensible.

Leveraging Research Support NSF National Middleware Initiative grant –U Michigan –U Texas-Austin –Indiana U –NCSA –Argonne National Lab 3 year support for core GRID services integration; Jetspeed/CHEF as portal tech

CHEF Summary CourseTools.NG – online support for learning; in pilot, fall rollout WorkTools.NG – online support for research, workgroups; in development for NEES, CMCS, NMI, rollout late summer; continuing development Goals – enhance online tools; make it easy to move between teaching and research; build standards efforts, collaborations so market of components develops

Why Open Source CMS? University should not outsource a core competence – teaching It fits University value structures, we are an open community It can build the extended academic community through collaboration and shared effort It is a grand experiment, worthy of the University’s participation

Portal Engine: Jetspeed Velocity CHEF Teamlets: Written in JAVA Responsible for GUI Operate in the context of a session. Rely on services for any persistent or “cross-user” information. Services Persistent System-wide Multiple implementations of services Configurable as to what implementation provides what service Servlets: Access services outside of the portal engine: AccessServlet and WebDavServlet Services API CHEF Architecture Web Server: Tomcat Turbine Non-HTTP Components (i.e. )

Portal: Tomcat Turbine Jetspeed + CHEF extensions to Jetspeed Teamlets: Written in JAVA Responsible for GUI Operate in the context of a session. Rely on services for any persistent or “cross-user” information. Services Persistent System-wide Multiple implementation s of services Configurable as to what implementation provides what service …. Services API CHEF/OKI Relationship OKIOKI

OKI APIs – CHEF Implementation Authentication Authorization Local ID Logging DBC Shared Objects (Agent, Group, AgentIterator) Filing (*) Hierarchy (*) UserMessaging (*) WorkFlow (**) Scheduling (**) * unpublished but well enough along that we can do something ** unpublished, unspecified As OKI APIs become available we either swap out CHEF APIs or build OKI translators – ‘Innovate and Normalize’ localid and locallyuniqueidentifier

Tool OAI Records Tool User 1 2 n User portals Team-aware Portlets CHEF Web Services Standard CHEF services (e.g., Discussions, Schedule) Added Value: Saving/retrieving query/response sets In team context OKI APIs Retrieving Saving New Search DLXS DLXS Middleware OAIster Topical Data Sets Transformation Indexing Filtering OKI DR Query Response Team aware portlets include Standard CHEF tools plus Search (with search tracking) NSDL OAIster/CHEF Proposal

Current CHEF Environment CHEF Uses Jetspeed as its tool coordination framework, velocity as its presentation language, Portlet for its tool specification, and Turbine for its service broker. There is a wide range of underlying services including OKI, CHEF, and Grid Services. CHEF/Jetspeed also supports “simple” integration of tools using an i-frame which are not portlet-based. A CHEF Application TurbineJetspeed CHEF OKI Grid Portlet Velocity XML/XSLT HTML PERL, JSP, etc Ideally, all of these interfaces would not be based on a particular product (Jetspeed, uPortal, WebSphere, etc) but instead would be based on a standard which was supported across products. Then we could share components.

Standards Efforts The full suite of standards is several years out –Some need our input now OKI – we are working in this space WSRP – Support WSDL (i.e. pre-presentation data) instead of HTML (post-presentation) JSR-168 and WSIA – Service lifecycle, brokering, discovery We need to start a collaborative effort to bring order to this problem space –CHEF has one useful architecture to provide transition In both the Educational and Research support areas As standards evolve, we can quickly test and deploy them Becoming “Jetspeed agnostic” by abstracting APIs If we can work together to solve the standards problems, organizations can maintain their existing portals and add support for these standards, upgrading as they go.

Cross-Portal Development IMS at data level OKI at services level Building channel adapters for Jetspeed uPortal WSRP++ and display level ‘standards’ and best practices –Setting up meeting with uPortal, CHEF, IU portal, Stellar MIT developers to discuss, figure out next steps Goal is, always, interoperable components

Navigo project Michigan,MIT,Stanford,Indiana Goal is real tool, module interoperability On the way to standards Component Interoperability

Research, Teaching and Public Service Alliance for Community Technology African AIDs Project AIHEC – American Indian Higher Education Consortium How do open source, collaborative efforts contribute to and help us understand the new information dynamics in all our domains of interest?

CHEF Project Site

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