We have a variety of integration scenarios available to us, since we have some school-based services propped up on underlying university services.
Authentication
We have too many possibilities here:
- AD (i.e. LDAP)
- Kerberos
- A "weblogin" SSO Apache module
- Our own .NET web service that queries the AD
We've been using the last route, even though it is in some respects the ugliest one, mostly because the web service was written before we started thinking about Sakai. But then we spent so much time trying to get a web service consumer working in Sakai 1.5 that I don't think we really helped ourselves out much here. Oh well - it was a good training exercise.
Course Site Registration
Our AD has an OU for each course and section recognized by the registrar, so again our web service that queries the AD seems a good way to go.
Course Site Creation
Guess what? Also in the AD. Part of me hates this, part of me is happy that we can get most of what we need out of the same web service. Our population is small enough that performance may not be an issue, but that's still an open question.
Other areas of integration
These are on the back-burner for the pilot.