COmanage Call 9-July-2010
*Attending*
Heather Flanagan, Independent (chair)
Ken Klingenstein, Internet2
Steven Carmody, Brown
Chris Hubing, Pennsylvania State U.
Jim Leous, Pennsylvania State U.
Renee Frost, Internet2
Steve Olshansky, Internet2
Emily Eisbruch, Internet2, scribe
*New Action Items*
[AI] (SteveO) will follow up with Ken about email list structure.
[AI] (Ken) will develop a COmanage Service Manager job description.
[AI] (Ken) will email the group a COmanage entrance interview/survey for a VO.
*Carry Over Action Items*
[AI] (Steven and Benn) will continue to work on demo development.
[AI] (Ken) will initiate discussion with UK around collaboration platform work.
[AI] (Heather) will raise the VO Cookbook issue on the upcoming International Collaboration Call.
[AI] (Jim) will send the group screenshots of the Penn State Confluence dashboard.
[AI] (Benn, Jim, Chris, Steven) will discuss what's needed to move ahead with the Women's Science Network VO. (on hold as of June 11, 2010)
DISCUSSION
*NSF SDCI Grant*
Ken reported that things are moving along with the SDCI grant proposal. Additional VOs have been added to the scope. A budget adjustment has been requested and is being worked on.
Ken noted that most science collaborations have needs around SSH, however, they all have slightly different needs. Requirement gathering will be important.
COmanage Service Manager*
*There will likely be a need for a COmanage Service Manager, as a separate role from the COmanage Developer (Benn Oshrin) role. A COmanage Service Manager would
- do liaison work with the VOs
- operate a small service instance within the Internet2 / InCommon context
[AI] (Ken) will draft a COmanage Service Manager job description.
*Email List Structures*
The International calls with the Dutch have been going well. Representatives from the UK and Australia may join in the future.
The COmanage-dev list might include more detailed information on the US environment than the International participants would be interested in.
SteveO will work with Ken on differentiating the international list from the COmanage-dev list.
[AI] (SteveO) will follow up with Ken about email list structure.
*Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) Visit*
Ken recently visited LBL and presented a COmanage demo that was very well received. It was noted that LBL does not do classified research and so has fewer security issues to tackle than other labs. LBL is interested in Level of Assurance issues, and has use cases for gold and platinum LoA. Ken will most likely return to LBL for workshops later in the summer.
*Science Software Sustainability Workshops*
Ken also noted that plans are developing at various organizations for Science Software Sustainability Workshops this fall, including one focusing on sustaining Condor.
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10050/nsf10050.jsp?org=NSF
*Google Apps and Groups*
Several organizations, possibly including LBL and University of West Florida, are looking at the best way to provision groups in to Google apps. There is dissatisfaction with what is offered by Google Groups. Grouper offers a promising pathway for these organizations.
*COmanage Demos*
Two COmanage Demos are being worked on
- Duke/Orca COmanage Demo (Jeff Chase and Team)
- GENI COmanage Demo (Steven and Benn)
The two demos should complement each other.
*Duke/Orca COmanage Demo*
Steven reported that Jeff Chase and his team at Team at Duke are putting together a COmanage demo in connection with the Orca project. http://nicl.cod.cs.duke.edu/orca/
Ken hopes to get slides on this project when it is farther along.
In the development phase, Shilen has helped to create a new leaf inside Grouper, for creation of groups. There is work underway to modify the Orca portal to obtain the attributes delivered by Shib. (Previously, attributes were delivered via certificates.) The attributes will then be passed to a policy engine. The portal will change what it displays based on attributes.
Phase II will involve COmanage, including obtaining permissions from a VO and forwarding these attributes to a backend service.
*COmanage Demo for GENI*
The other COmanage demo is being worked on by Steven and Benn for Ken to show at the upcoming GENI meeting in San Diego.http://www.geni.net/?p=1739
This demo implements a diagram that Steven sent to the group a few months back, involving a uPortal instance and a COmanage instance. It will have a uPortal portlet accessing a backend service. The backend service will use aggregated identity to decide what to return to the portal.
The demo will involve
- Logging into COmanage as a researcher
- Registering
- Switching to a different browser
- Acting as the CO admin
- Adding newly registered person to a group(s)
- Returning to being the researcher
- Logging into a portal
- Portal picks up data from COmanage, the researcher
- Click something to run this portlet.
Some hurdles are involved in using the CO.internet2.edu VM as a basis for the GENI demo. There may be a need to update the IdP on that VM. Steven has discussed this with TSG and will follow up.
*Invitation / Registration and Other Issues*
Ken noted it would be helpful to maintain a list of issues that are currently missing from COmanage but will eventually be handled to create a more mature COmanage environment.
- Invitation
- Registration
- WAYF Issue
- Console appearance (some VOs interested in Drupal)
- Helping VOs figure out Schema and Attribute Issues
Concerning the invitation/registration issue, the Dutch are using a mail message from the person configuring the collaboration. However, the Dutch generally release more attributes internally than is customary in the US. In the US, we may need to push uApprove to properly handle attribute release questions.
The WAYF issue will become important, as COmanage will most likely be working with transnational VOs under that SDCI grant. Steven noted promising work in Denmark that is a subset of what JISC is working on.
Concerning helping VOs to deal with schema and attribute issues, Ken has been working on a list of requirement-gathering questions that could be important to go over with a new VO. This could become a function for the COmanage Service Manager
[AI] (Ken) will email the group a COmanage entrance interview/survey for a VO.
Will VOs will want course information? Do we have anything normative in the eduCourse space? Steven commented that there is nothing widely deployed, but something being done with Apple iTunes. Jim commented that some individuals at Penn State are looking into this question, at Brendan's request. Brown and Penn State currently use groups for course related information. That's the de facto approach.
Steven commented on the general need to focus energies on the upper middleware layer and exporting a set of interfaces that domesticated applications would use. It would be good to define more standard APIs.
Ken remarked that on the REFEDS email discussion, the Irish have said that they plan to develop a list of major VOs that cut across national boundaries and to designate a lead federation for each.
Next Call: Friday, July 23, at 2pm ET