Tag Archives: Internet2

ITANA.ORG – I.T. Architects iN Academia takes off

I have been talking with peers, pushing ideas around and working with various groups for a while and it seems that the work is finally paying off. ITANA.ORG (http://www.itana.org) is a peer group for I.T. Architects in Academia. We will share ideas, tricks and tools; work on common deliverables and working group projects; spread the word about what I.T. Architects do and help new Architects get their feet. At least, that is my vision for the group.

Head over to ITANA.ORG and sign up for the email notices, pick up the RSS and request an account. Have an idea for a post? Send me an email.

Thanks for everyone’s help, support and enthusiasm.

– Jim

Advanced CAMP – Enterprise Workflow Morning Session

I’m in Burlington Vermont – just after the flood – attending the EDUCAUSE Advanced Camp on Workflow Models and Technologies. This meeting has a wiki space at Internet2.

Paul Hill, Bob Morgan – Opening Presentation

Discussion around “what is workflow”

Is there a difference between Human Workflow and Business Process Orchestration?

Industry will use the term workflow loosely – it can mean a generic business process, it can mean document management, it can mean orchestration…

A good qoute. The previous paradigm was humans trying to get the most out of the computer. “Workflow is about the computer getting the most out of the human elements” When you do have to touch a human, make that as efficient as possible.

Workflow and Middleware

(1)To extend the workflow across multiple system, processing must interact with AuthN/Z and directory services using existing MWare infrastructure.

(2)Workflow can be used to facilitate the management of IdM and AuthN/Z systems. Sun made recent announcements about adding workflow to their IdM system.

Microsoft Published an Architecture journal that was focused on Workflow.

Approval processes in privilege management systems

Persona A can have role B with approval of person C. Tom Barton states that a good privilege management system alleviates the needs for the workflow for approval.

Other areas: Shibboleth approval processes. Virtual Organizations (VO). If VOs have the same need for workflow as real organizations, how do you deploy a workflow solution across a Virtual Organization?

WS-BPEL as presented by Joe Sharp, Architect, Microsoft. Connected Systems Division.

Orchestration vs. Choreography :

Orchestration: Execution order of web services interactions, describes process flow, includes internal and external webservices, process is always controlled by one party.

Choreography: Between different parties. Peer to Peer. Tracks the sequence of messages involving multiple parties and sources. Public message exhanges, not executable process.

BPEL standard does not yet support the definition of industry standard BPEL languages.

BPEL is Web services specific. It is WSDL only. The efforts today is focused on the execution language. The choreography portion is not in focus at this point in time. New efforts are spinning up to deal with the choreography portion. BPEL 2.0 should be out later this year.

Open source BPEL products: Twister, bexee

BPEL “Opportunities” – Compensation Patterns – the ability to roll back transactions based on a failure at a future point in time. Some portions should be rolled back, others may not. Compensation means doing another business transaction to compensate for a business traction that really occurred. Since in workflow, the business transactions occur and the events really occur. You cannot “undo” the cutting of check or the digging of a trench. You have to trigger a second business process to request a refund or fill the trench.

Karl Frank – Borland and OMG

Specialized in modeling business process – contributor to UML 2 and 2.1, BPDM, etc.

UML2.X – State Transition Diagram and Activity Diagram are related to workflow business process modeling.

Model Driven Architecture – capture the required business functionality without contamination of implementation specifics.

Merger with BPMI (Business Process Management Institute) – Business Process Definition Metamodel, Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). These do not separate out Orchestration from Choreography.

UML Behavior Diagrams – Statemachines for Workflow artifacts. What state is the loan application in?

BPMN model does not generate BPEL out of the box. You need to know which parts of BPMN are implemented in the BPEL specification.

Scott Thorne, Architect MIT and OKI

Reasons for doing workflow: the business process will probably outlive the technical implementation therefore having a generic model is important. Allows developers to focus on application specific technologies not rewriting infrastructure functions.

When you are designing you Web services, spend the time to be sure that you have vetted the designs with a wide variety of consumers to plan for changes in the future.

OKI Project Site

Education Commons dot Org

James Dalziel, Director, Macquarie ELearning Centre of Excellence(MELCOE), Macquarie University

MAMS – Identity and access management – leading Shibboleth rollout 500K+ identities. Developing Sharpe and Autograph

LAMS – eLearning workflow system

ASK-OOS

RAMP (Research Activityflow and Middleware Priorities)

  1. Part 1 – Authorization – generalized library using XACML
  2. Part 2 – Activityflow – “People-based workflow” for eResearch. Especially concurrent multi-actor multi-step workflows. Demonstrator of re-usable activityflows (builds on LAMS 2 core). Theoretical review of workflow standards and concepts
  3. Part 3 – Authorization/Activityflow fusion exploration.

LAMS – based on new field of “Learning Design” based on IMS Learning Design specification. Goes beyond that. Web app (J2EE+Flash) Open source (GPL). Any teacher could create and run. Core concepts of LAMS are not e-learning specific. Concurrent multi-actor, multi-step workflow systems. LAMS community site with about 1300 community developed flows.

I’m very intrigued with the LAMS project. Could we use this for Architecture requirements gathering? Here is our standard workflow(s). Here are the steps that we follow.

LAMS v2 – provides a modular architecture for building different kinds of people-based worklfow systems. Separation of workflow core engine from workflow object definitions.

Starting up RAMS – Research Activity Management System. A new suite of activity tools appropriate for research based activities. Currently vaporware.

Brian McGough, UITS – Kuali Enterprise workflow (KEW)

Started out as OneStart Workflow. Worked with Cornell and changed name to Kuali Enterprise Workflow.

They have a Java API and a Web Services API. Java is most used client. There is an Edoc Lite (for non-programmers) – easy to use, XML document definition, for form based workflow.

KEW is a general-purpose electronic routing infrastructure (workflow engine) designed to facility the automation of mediated business processes.

Routing is based on E-Docs.

In order to make workflow decisions based on payload content (content based routing), you need to map the content within your payload in a semantically neutral way.

Rules – application routing data stored in workflow. Prevents client application from writing screens and logic to maintain their routing data. Routing data for multiple apps housing in a single location, can be managed from a single place. Rule functions driven by java/xml components.

KEW 3.0 is moving towards industry standards: BPEL and ESB.

Internet2 Collaboration Tools Phone Call 4 October 2005

### Attendees: George Brett, Steve Olshanski, John-Paul Robinson, Jim Phelps

George: Opening comment about presentation “Identity 2.0” at OSCON 2005

### Shift in Identity discusion

Students provide a lot of personal information on Facebook but they also turn on the FERPA flags to protect their information from “the institution”. Steve asked about Linked In.

Movement towards people being responsible for their own attributes and expression of their attributes.

### Agenda:

1. Review the notes from I2FMM on Jim’s blog.
2. Follow up from the I2FMM – what are the next steps.
3. Using the I2FMM and Internet2 tags.
4. Spring Member Meeting – a set of tags.

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Identity Assertions, Extending Services and my Cell Phone

When my cell phone rings, I flip open the cover and check the phone number of the caller. If the caller’s number is blocked or is not in my address book, I usually let the call go to voice mail. If the caller leaves a message, I listen to the message and then decide whether or not I will call them back. This is a simple case of Identity Assertion, Checking Access Rights and Extending Service.

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I2FMM Collaboration Tools Presentation 2005

My Presentation can be downloaded from the Internet2 Fall Member Meeting site as a PDF .

My opening comments are included in my PDF.

George Brett’s opening comments:

1. The recent Wizards Meeting used wiki’s for real-time posting of notes and documents. This was a shift from the usual – mailing list and weekly phone call.
1. Ineternet2 has many communities of interest. Those communities can aggregate to form larger communities. You can imagine a vin diagram of nested and overlapping circles that represents these groups.
1. He will be listening to see what these people think about these topics and to look for direction for Internet2’s collaboration and communication.

JPR’s Demo of MyVOCS.

Discussion Portion of the Meeting

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Internet2 Spring Member Meeting Day 2

### MyWOCS: My Virtual Organization Collaboration Suite ###

#### Triple-A – Authentication, Authorization, Accounts ####

* Authentication – has to do with you identity provided by identity provider
* Authorization – has to do with your attributes. How do you combine those attributes especially when they come from different systems and they apply to selected areas.
* Accounts – has to do with provisioning system-specific resources.

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