ISDA Key Initiatives

Overview

The following sections contain information on several key initiatives currently underway in the Information Software Development and Architecture group. This group is dedicated to create, maintain and promote a flexible software architecture based on an infrastructure that consists of components and interfaces that are easily usable (and used) by software developers across MIT.

Web Content Management System (CMS)

Prototype the Alfresco content management system by using it as the platform for the new IS&T web site redesign project and the ISDA Developer's Portal to determine if it could provide a suitable content management system for MIT.

The project involves 3 phases:

• Installing and learning about Alfresco, doing a gap analysis of its out-of-the box features against the desired features of the Developers web site, and producing a development plan to close the gap. At each stage of the development plan, Alfresco will be evaluated in terms of how well it meets our needs and any issues or concerns will be documented.
• At the end of the Alpha development milestone, a decision whether to contract for the Enterprise Platform will be made. At that point, the IS&T web site development will begin in parallel with the Beta phase of the Developer's web site.
• Once both web sites are fully functioning, a final service recommendation report will be built and provided to the community.

Developing a prototype allows the new content management system to be applied to solve a well-defined problem. This provides the quality of data that is needed to really understand the system's value and/or limitations and to evaluate whether the proposed system is suitable for meeting all of MIT's needs. In addition, since IS&T is developing a content management system for its web site, prototyping may avoid a costly learning experience. Finally, a well supported and well promoted Developer's web site is likely to receive a fair amount of use, which will help IS&T/ISDA meet its objective of delivering developer support.

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Thalia

Thalia's purpose is to allow a DLC to upload images, assign meta-data to the images and organize them into albums for sharing. Phase 1 of the project is being tested by HS&T and will be installed on one of their servers. Phase 2 involves producing a sharable image repository service that would allow IS&T to offer a centralized Image Service to DLCs. This service would reside on a centralized server(s), allowing various DLCs to set up departmental repositories on the same server with a certain degree of customization for each repository.

Thalia currently has a rich web-based UI that uses Flash through Open Laszlo, an Image Management Engine and a REST-like web interface, and an OSID that allows external applications to search Thalia data. This project would increase Thalia's scalability so that multiple repositories can be supported within the same server, limited UI customization per repository is available, file storage efficiency is improved to handle large numbers of images, and redundancy and reasonably rapid recovery in case of system failure is provided; as well as its functionality by enabling access control via MIT's authorization system and not just individuals and supporting user ordering of images in albums for use in slide shows and presentations.

At least two customers would be involved in beta testing and a production deployment of the service to at least three customers would occur by May 2007.

The proposed Thalia service would fill the DLC's need for image management functionality at a reasonable cost. Thalia would be interoperable with other tools at MIT such as Dspace and Stellar and would allow images stored in a Thalia repository to be migrated to other institutional stores if necessary.

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MIT Touchstone

The objective of MIT Touchstone is to provide a single sign-on solution for MIT web applications requiring authentication. It will accomplish this by developing a central authentication service, to which users will be redirected the first time they attempt to access a protected page of a participating web server. Once users have authenticated successfully, they will be redirected back to the original web page. They will not need to authenticate again during the browser session, even when they visit other participating web sites. This service will support several ways for users to authenticate, and will leverage our existing Kerberos infrastructure.

What problem are we trying to solve?

• Users of MIT web applications find X.509 certificates awkward to use, thus increasing the support burden for web server administrators.
• Certificates cannot be used in certain client machine environments, e.g., from "kiosk" types of machines where users cannot install personal certificates, or in applications using delegated credentials.
• Developers of applications would like to be able to use one authentication service for multiple types of authentication (certificate, Kerberos credentials, username/password).

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MITBI - Forecasting & Modeling Pilot

Pilot implementation of a forecasting and modeling application initially for CSAIL and Broad with other DLC's to be added later. This pilot will allow departmental administrators to generate reports and respond to inquiries more quickly by having a central location where enterprise data can be combined with local data.

Currently MIT does not have a centrally supported forecasting and modeling tool to assist departmental administrators and faculty/PI's in managing their research awards. MIT's on campus research is in excess of $550 million, over 150 DLC's manage research projects and there are over 7,000 active research accounts. Properly matching available resources to project work requires a great deal of effort, complex shadow systems and the reliance of data gleaned from both local and enterprise systems. Once the data is combined, it must be analyzed and formatted for decision makers. This project will bring standard tools and a methodology to assist in this effort.

The benefits of this project will be to:

• Provide DLC's with a standard forecasting, modeling, and reporting tool.
• Store data in a secure and reliable manner.
• Eliminate the need to download sensitive data to local desktops.
• Allow DLC staff to focus efforts on analysis of data, versus generation of spreadsheets and reports.
• Have a data architecture which can easily and reliably join local with warehouse data
• Provide the ability to create what-if scenarios, including TBA people and cost objects.
• Provide the ability to manage purchasing and labor commitments.
• Support an easy to use reporting front-end with readable, professional-looking reports.
• Allow web reporting (to support faculty).
• Allow saving of forecasts and projections for future reference, in a secure way.
• Provide the ability to plan revenue and expense across multiple time dimensions.
• Allow departmental administrators to generate reports and respond to inquiries more quickly by having a central location where enterprise data can be combined with local data.

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Stellar

Stellar is the platform for learning, course management and collaboration, serving the MIT community. ISDA released Stellar 2.1.1 in January 2008. This version of Stellar introduces an updated sectioning tool, flexible calendaring options, an improved gradebook, as well as usability and performance enhancements. All Spring 2008 class sites have been updated to the latest version to enable new features. For highlights please see Announcing Stellar 2.1.1 Release.

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QuickPages

QuickPages is a web-based tool that lets anyone make a professional-looking web site quickly. This service will be ideal for departments that want a good-looking site, but don't have web designers on staff. The project will begin its pilot in the spring of 2008, with the goal of being available to the MIT community in the beginning of 2009.

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Managed Data Service

ISDA is working on providing a community wide service that would allow departments to store their data in a centrally hosted location. This service will be responsible for the consistency, integrity, and security of data while enabling departments to update their data and join it with other data from central Institute systems. Work on designing this service will begin in the spring of 2008.

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