1. William G. Thompson, Jr.
JA-SIG Board Member
Associate Director – Enterprise Systems & Services
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

2. JA-SIG – A Brief History
Established in 1999, as “an independent organization designed to increase the flow of information between educational institutions and companies involved in the development of administrative applications using Java technology.”
The first JA-SIG Conference was held in Orlando, Florida in Early discussions focused on a range of applications of Java. At a round-table discussion on portals, the seeds of the first major JA-SIG project – the open-source uPortal portal framework – were sown.
1) Nurture communication of best practices, new technologies, and innovative methodologies and projects related to Java,
2) Increase peer review, collaboration, and enhancement of Java administrative applications via an open applications web clearinghouse,
3) Broaden Java technology cross-fertilization between firms and schools on both a functional and geographic basis.

3. 2004: A New Mission
Provide education and research in the applied use of open technology architectures and systems
Inform the community of international activities, projects, and opportunities
Educate by coaching, collaborating, and sharing good practices
Create, through its various activities including conferences, projects, and outreach, an atmosphere of trust, goodwill, and mutual respect

4. JA-SIG, Inc.
Incorporated as a non-profit organization in the State of New Jersey on Valentine’s Day, 2005
Rutgers Law Clinic provided free legal services
Filed with IRS for 501(C)(3) status (Tax Exempt)

5. What Defines JA-SIG
Community and Collaboration among Higher Ed institutions world-wide
Developers, Managers, Content Providers, Vendors
JA-SIG sponsors Open Source projects
JA-SIG partners with vendors and the extended community to foster new Open Source business models for higher education

6. uPortal Developed for education, by education
Build a community and share expertise across institutions
Influence vendors and agencies
Promote open standards

7. Bootstrap JA-SIG Project Sakai Project $700,000 Mellon Funding
University of Delaware administration
3 year project, completed 12/03
Sakai Project
$580,000 Mellon Funding
University of Michigan administration
University of Delaware subcontractor
2 year project, ends 12/05

8. Development University contributors Contracted commercial developers
Columbia, Yale, British Columbia, Delaware, Princeton, Cornell, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Rutgers,…
Contracted commercial developers
Instructional media and magic
UNICON

9. Community Relationships
OKI
Institutional Channel Developers
Columbia Groups and Permissions
Yale CAS
Columbia HyperContent
Open Source Portfolio Initiative
Rutgers Alerts System
CHEF, Sakai
Shibb, Chandler, IMS, JISC…

10. Commercial Relationships
UNICON Academus, Support and Consulting
SCT Luminis ( 400+ sold)
WebCT
Blackboard Building Blocks
iAssessment K12 ASP
Sigma Systems
Computer Aid Support
RSmart – Sakai, OSPI, Kuali

11. World Wide Adoption 400+ in production 16 countries
5 commercial vendors
Hundreds of thousands of users
Large, small, k-12, government, commercial

14. uPortal Release History

15. uPortal 2.5 XML API standardization Concurrency standardization
Support for J2SE 5.0 (JDK 1.5)
More robust JSR-168 support
Improved Exception Handling
Springified PersonDirectory

16. uPortal 3.x Roadmap Configuration flexibility JSR-168 at the core
IChannel support
Complete WSRP support
Stability, performance and maintenance
uPortal 3.0 December 2005
uPortal 3.1 or 3.0.x April 2006

17. uPortal and JSR-168

18. Tools and Techniques Community & Collaboration Software Development
Confluence, Fisheye, CVSMonitor, Maven Reports and Mailing Lists
Software Development
CVS, JIRA, Ant / Maven, YourKit, Eclipse
Quality Assurance
JUnit, Clover, YourKit, CruiseControl

19. Confluence

20. JIRA

21. CVSMonitor/Fisheye

22. ViewCVS

23. Junit/Clover

24. CAS Maven

25. The Future Looks Bright
uPortal 2.x - still has a lot of legs…
uPortal 3.x - future platform for growth and extension
uPortal-Sakai connection - tools, tools and more tools
JA-SIG HyperContent
JA-SIG CAS
JA-SIG ????

26. The Sakai Connection
Sakai is a wealth of learning and collaboration content, tools, services. uPortal ought to be able to federate, summarize, present Sakai content. So it will…

27. …via WSRP uPortal WebSphere MS-Portal tool Sakai Home Athletics
Courses
Home
Athletics
Courses
MS-Portal
Home
Athletics
Courses
Sakai
tool
…via WSRP

28. …via native Channels and Portlets
uPortal’s JVM
uPortal
New Channel
UBC Mail
Sakai Chat
Sakai Presentation
Sakai Discussion
Cartoon channel
…..
Sakai
Velocity Tool
Sakai
JSF Tool
Sakai Services, APIs,
Components

29. uPortal “Federates” Sakai
myPortal
uPortal
tool
Sakai
tool
Sakai
tool
Sakai
tool

30. William G. Thompson, Jr.
JA-SIG Board Member
Associate Director – Enterprise Systems & Services
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey