Meeting info

Location: Indiana University LIT Offices
Date: 27 June 2007
Participants: Damian, Steve, Jim (by phone), Gaurav, Jon

Meeting Notes

Resources for Sakai and Citations Helper development

Subversion Issues

2.4.x maintenance branch procedures
coming soon...

Citations Helper Configuration Changes

Issues

• Data Caching - currently, XML config files are read each time the Citations Helper is used. It would be good to cache the data and update it only when the XML files have been changed.
• Production Environment Updating - it can be difficult (or, currently not allowed) to update any file sitting on any production server.

Solution

By storing configuration XML files within Content Hosting, we can:

• cache config data more efficiently and parse XML only when the XML files are updated. This is done through integrating Event, Observer and EventTrackingService objects into our existing services/managers (BaseSearchManager, BaseConfigurationService).
• allow admins to update files through the running instance of Sakai. This can be done either through the Resources tool by an admin, or a user that an admin authorizes to make modifications, or through WebDAV (for scripting purposes).

Technical Details

components.xml

• add two new properties:
  • citationsAdminSite - name of the site used for Citations Helper Administration.
  • citationsConfigFolder - name of the folder within Content Hosting that contains configuration information.
• retain all current properties but re-purpose the XML file descriptors:
  • databaseXml - path to XML file underneath citationsConfigFolder that describes the database/category hierarchy.
  • siteConfigXml - path to XML file underneath citationsConfigFolder that describes basic config values.

JIRA bugs that should be fixed in the maintenance branch

• SAK-9375 - Getting issue details... STATUS
• SAK-9896 - Getting issue details... STATUS
• SAK-9898 - Getting issue details... STATUS

Futures/Improvements

• Sorting result sets
• Sorting and reordering citation lists
• Citation import from RefWorks, EndNote, etc.
• Brad Wheeler feature
  • Authorization and security issues: take a look at CitationServlet (based on AccessServlet)
  • UI: consider launching the Citations Helper in a new window in a new 'mode' (in addition to the current modes of ADD and REVISE coming from Resources)
• Reducing database activity (see Bill's Options for more efficient SQL storage)
• Working with a triple-store
• Citations Helper config process within Sakai (with a UI)