technical experiences of adopting sakai at umeå university

Technical experiences of adopting Sakai at Umeå University

Daniel Lind, Umeå [email protected]

2nd European Sakai ConferenceStockholm, 2009-05-06

mailto:[email protected]

Agenda

• Background• Project• Surrounding infrastructure• Archiving and porting• Problems encountered• Improvements• Maintenance

– Database– Management model

23-04-21 Daniel Lind, Umeå University 2

Umeå University

• Founded in 1965• 4 faculties• 50 departments• 29000 students• 4000 employees• www.umu.se



Background

• 2001– LMS system in Ping Pong

• Spring 2008– CLE review by Göran Landgren

• June 2008– Vice Chancellor decided to replace Ping Pong

with Sakai• Autumn 2008

– Vanilla Sakai pilot• December 2009

– First release of Sakai at UmU

Project

• Goal:– Adopt Sakai

• Integrate to the web complex• Adjust to the IT Infrastructure• Import extra tools

– SiteStats, Melete

• Skin

– Phase out Ping Pong• Plan porting of data to Sakai• Archiving of data in Ping Pong



Project setup sep 2008

• System owner– IT Office

• Workgroup– 6 persons with key positions

• Project– Project manager– Project group

• ~7 persons

• Budget of 200 000 euro


Project estimation

• Total of 2200 hours• Sep 2008 – Dec 2009• Jump start thanks to Stockholm

– Code– Experience

• Key tasks not yet fully finished:– CM

• Intermediate external site creation

– Phase out Ping Pong


IT infrastructure at UmU

• LDAP– Employee and student info– Course info– Organisation info

• CAS– SSO

• Shibboleth / SimpleSAMLphp– SAML for federated SSO– Other Swedish Universities

IT infrastructure cont.

• uPortal– Student portal– Entry to course sites– Share data storage with MyWorkspace

• InfoGlue– CMS– Plain HTML pages– Help pages…



Sakai installation

• Cambro– Contest– Virtual complement to class room, conference room etc

• MySQL• RedHat 5• Production

– 4 servers (Quad-core, 8GB RAM)• 1 load balancer and SAML• 2 Tomcat servers• 1 database/file server

– 24x7 monitoring, diesel power backup• Test - 1 server (virtual)


Development enviroment

• Development server– Same as production servers

• Windows and Linux client laptops• Samba from server• Individual network port ranges

– 8000+, 9000+, 10000+…– Problem with incoming mail

• Eclipse remote debugging


Archiving and porting

• 300GB data in Ping Pong• Problems

– What medium for “eternity” archiving:– Paper, DVD, Tape, HD

– What about taped lectures, chats, etc?– No national guidelines yet!

• A preview from National archive

– Ping Pong as a black box • Exporting the whole db• What formats can Ping Pong export into?• What formats do Sakai accept?

Porting cont.

• Problems cont:– “We want to continue to use it”

• Strategy for Sakai archiving– All paper?– We don’t care – but not in Sakai?– Guidelines first!


Porting cont.

Lessons learned porting/archiving:• Importance of standards• Time and money• Declare how archiving is done early• Open systems• No access to db===“bad”• The archive has to be indexed and

searchable by regulations



Tuning

• Tuning is necessary already from the start:– MySQL– Tomcat– Sakai– JVM

• Real life examples• Missing in the installation guide?


Open Source

• Users interpretation of Open Source:– “We can do what we want with it

because we got the code.”• Approx. 30 items on wish list!

– From “Version control” to “tool naming”.

• What about a commercial system?– “When will the system support

personal site layouts?” • All about investment revenue!

Cooperation

• Code from Stockholm• What to cooperate about?

– Specific tools, manuals, upgrades– Requirements, code, test, bug tracking,

support

• Possibly a national se-sakai level, but:– No new Sakai community!

• Session later today



Problems encountered

• Data quality in campus system– Never used before

• MyISAM vs InnoDB– Switch took 2 minutes– Sakai didn’t complain about no transaction

support• Site sections

– Missed both settings in sakai.properties and insert to CM_SEC_CATEGORY_T table

• Performance– Tuning DB– Test & quizzes tool

Problems cont.

• Help– Google

• Web, Sakai Jira …– Sakai-dev list

• History at gmane.org– Doc in code folders…

• Contacting teachers– Maintenance time slots – how to inform except

MOTD– Forcing site owners to a special site.

• Opt-outs

• Statistics– What’s the usage of Sakai?– Are the sites active?


Problems cont.

• Language– Swedish vs. English:– Either swedish correct or english or

none– ”Kurs website” instead of ”course

website”– Mostly minor problems but users are

annoyed.• Site data porting from pilot to production:

– Compress and download– Fortunately only a handful sites



Improvements

• Documentation– Database doc– Usage doc /Help

• Code– Single Sing-On support– Technical overall Sakai system doc

• ”Sakai for dummies”• Videos are great!

Improvements cont.

• System– “A site for site owners”– Native multi languages support– Version control in resources tool– Statistics on system level– Open but password protected sites



Database maintenance


Database maintenance cont.

• 304 tables• 2197 columns• If a change is necessary – what is

affected?• How to change?• How to use the tables?


• Documentation:– What is the purpose of this table?– What data is stored?– What are expected value ranges?– Table owner

• Table changes– Notification:

• “Owner”• Via Sakai-dev?



• Conventions– Naming, views, triggers, etc.• What about integration with external

systems?• Web services…

– New column, larger column, new table• No problem

– Datatype change, column removal• Probably problems!


Database growing

• Problem:A table change affecting many tools– No changes will be done if to much

work to fix trunk• Will leed to new tables…



• One way:• Database refactoring

– Improve database without changing the whole system at the same time

– Data up-to-date through triggers, views etc.– Mark the old table as deprecated and phased

out to a certain release.– Let many help each other make code changes

between releases.– www.infoq.com/presentations/ambler-database-

refactoring

• Track changes!• Homogeneous database layers



Maintenance

• Three lines of support:• 1st line

– Authentication, user information, firewalls, etc.

• 2nd line– Full Sakai usage support

• 3rd line– >Troubleshooting, bug reporting, fixes


Maintenance management model

• Why?– Maintenance involve several different

parties• Business department, IT department,

economy department, …

– Base organization not suited for such coordination

– A mainteance organization is needed– Compare to project organization

• Persistent

pm3

• maintenance management model• Swedish model (only?)• Same on all central systems at UmU• Tool for clarifying responsibilities

between business and IT parties• Consists of four central

components:


Pm3 component 1

• Well defined maintenance assignments– Maintenance plan

• What to-do during the year with the system• Renewed yearly• All parties must agree upon it


pm3 component 2

• Efficient maintenance object– Declare what is being maintained and

where the boundaries are.– May contain several IT solutions and

business solutions– Business perspective (not IT)


Pm3 component 3

• Described, understood and accepted maintenance processes.– Process for problem based support – Process for change management – Process for management by objectives – Process for operational problem

management


pm3 component 4

• Businesslike maintenance organizations– Project like-form:

Based on persons from the ordinary organization

– Permanent– One-to-one mapping to maintenance

object.



Maintenance organization

Business IT Is the core of…

Budget level

Solution owner

Solution owner

Steering committee

Decision-making level

Solution manager

Solution manager

Maintenance management group

Operational level

Object specialists

Developer, IT operator, etc


Maintenance workflow

Reference groups

steeringcommittee

Maintenancemanagementgroup

Developedcomponents

Adjustedcomponents

Fixes

Development proposals

Suggestions for fixes and new functionality

Projects


Usage

• Spring 2009 (now)– 115 active course sites– 381 project sites

• Autumn 2009– 800+ active course sites

• Spring 2010– 1000+ active course sites

Usage cont.

• No central regulations at UmU about CLE systems yet.– Up to each and everyone

• The departments are porting or planning to do so– Costs

• Automation of adminstration• Maintenance


Usage cont.

• Pleasant but not so common problem:– Does too many wants to use it?!

• Advertising:– Not planned yet.– Killer apps does not need advertising...– Probably late 2009

• Depends on the usage progress



Questions!

technical experiences of adopting sakai at umeå university

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