Luminis Modification Procedure
February 19, 2007 | 2 Comments
Over the last few years of administering a SunGard Higher Education Luminis portal, I have often found it necessary to make modification to the base system. The mods themselves are reasonably simple, but remembering to maintain them across patches and upgrades can prove challenging. In response to this, the following procedure has proven to be most efficient for us at Plymouth State University.
When making modifications to your base Luminis system…
- Copy the original file to filename.version
(ex. cp nested-tables.xsl nested-tables.xsl.3.3.3.16) - Make your modifications to the original file.
(ex. vi nested-tables.xsl) - When you are happy with the complete and tested modifications, copy the file to filename.psu
(ex. cp nested-tables.xsl nested-tables.xsl.psu) - Once a modification is complete you make notes on why these changes were made in ~/CHANGELOG
When you have completed this, you will have three files where you previously had only one. The reason for making all these copies is to protect yourself during patches. You will always have a copy of the file with your modifications and a copy of the unmodified version. This sets you up nicely for the following patch procedure.
Rolling modification back in when patching Luminis…
- Make note of the current version number.
(ex. 3.3.3.16, you get this with the cpver command) - Apply the patch as documented .
- Use find to get a list off all your modifications.
(ex. find $CP_ROOT -name “*.psu”) - If the file is a binary archive (jar or car) you will need to extract it and apply the following steps for each modified file inside the archive.
(ex. mkdir tmp; cp uPortal.jar tmp; cd tmp; jar xvf uPortal.jar; rm uPortal.jar) - Use diff to compare the file against your custom version.
(ex. diff nested-tables.xsl nested-tables.xsl.psu)- If there are no differences, the file was not updated by the patch, in this case you should move the old versioned file to match the new version number. You are complete with this mod.
(ex. mv nested-tables.xsl.3.3.3.16 nested-tables.xsl.3.3.3.64)
- If there are no differences, the file was not updated by the patch, in this case you should move the old versioned file to match the new version number. You are complete with this mod.
- If step 5 yielded differences, you need to see if the file was changed from the previous version.
(ex. diff nested-tables.xsl nested-tables.xsl.3.3.3.16)- If there are no differences, then the file hasn’t changed and you can put your mod back in place and simply update the version number. You are complete with this mod.
(ex. cp nested-tables.xsl nested-tables.xsl.3.3.3.64; cp nested-tables.xsl.psu nested-tables.xsl)
- If there are no differences, then the file hasn’t changed and you can put your mod back in place and simply update the version number. You are complete with this mod.
- If step 6 yielded differences, you need to merge your changes into the new version, this could be simple or complicated depending on how much has actually changed. This is a manual process where you will need to reference ~/CHANGELOG to detemine the extent of what was modified.
- If the file was inside a binary (step 4), recreate the archive
(ex. jar cf uPortal.jar .; cp uPortal.jar ../uPortal.jar.psu; cp uPortal.jar ../uPortal.jar) - If all your mods have been addressed, you can startup and test Luminis. You are complete.
(Note: Be sure to test the patched Luminis cleanly before applying mods)
The following steps must be done for each modified file
Obviously this is still a fair amount of work, but it is designed to be forgiving of mistakes. You generally have a fair number of files that are self explanatory in name and nature. Additionally, if done in proper order it can be done against a fair number of mods quickly. Therefore this procedure is scalable.
If anyone is doing anything similar, drastically different, or has questions or concerns about this process, please let me know in the comments section. I’m always looking to gain efficiency wherever possible, so please chime in!
Tags: luminis, modifications, nested-tables.xsl, patch, patches, plymouth state university, portal, sungard, sungardhe, uportal
Girls of PSU Calendar
November 1, 2006 | 5 Comments
I was recently shown this by a friend. Apparently a student/alumni at Plymouth State has put together a Girls of PSU calendar featuring students of Plymouth State University. Most of the young women are seniors and juniors and many of the pictures feature them in familiar Plymouth locations (Lamson Library, Lucky Dog, etc). The site and calendar both seem to be tastefully constructed.
From their MySpace page:
THE GIRLS OF PSU” 2007 Calendar is available for pre-order purchase! Two dollars from the sale of each calendar goes directly to a charitable organization that has been selected by each of the models. Also included are invaluble monthly coupons for incredible discounts at “The Common Man” restaurants! Estimated street date for this calendar is October 24.
They seem to have missed their release date. When it does eventually come out, you can buy it through PayPal for $15.00 + $4.00 shipping. I am impressed that they are donating some of their revenue to charity. As odd as this may seem, in many ways a calendar such as this could be good PR for the university…
Tags: calendar, common man, girls, girls of psu, lucky dog, plymouth, plymouth state university, psu
Summit 2006, A Great Success
June 14, 2006 | 7 Comments
In April Plymouth State University had a large showing at SunGard Higher Education Summit 2006. In fact, 13 PSU staff attended and gave 14 presentations.
While at Summit in Orlando it quickly became clear that PSU was a significant presence at the 7000+ attendee conference. A fairly substantial accomplishment for a small, public institution in northern New Hampshire. As a whole the conference was an amazing experience for many of us. We learned a lot, had a lot of fun, and felt a bit like rock stars for 3 days.
This was my third Summit attendance and the second time I was presenting. I personally had the pleasure of giving four presentations over the course of this conference. Two which were normal solo presentations, one less formal in the developers lounge, and a third with my colleagues Ken Kochien and Jen Hall. Being able to interact with this many people with great ideas, questions and general excitement was exhilarating.
New at Summit this year was the Luminis Developer’s lounge which was primarily organized by Jon Wheat of Messiah College and founder of the Luminis Developer’s Network. As far as I could tell, the lounge was a great success where many of us engaged in informal in depth discussions among each other and with some significant SunGard representatives including Vishal Goenka and Josh Horner. My time spent in the lounge was amazingly valuable and insightful.
I’m finally getting around to writing this article because I was notified today about the results of one of my two official solo presentations. Specifically in reference to the presentation titled Implement and Deploy Banner Channels. Apparently reviews on that presentation were exceptional, placing me in the top five Summit 2006 presentations. I left that presentation feeling good about it, but I was not aware it was that well received. As part of this recognition, I have been awarded a free 4 night stay in one of the Summit hotels for Summit 2007 in Las Vegas, Nevada on March 19-22.
I figure I can take a brief opportunity to have a big head and share a subset of the comment feedback I received from the session evaluations:
- Best session yet. Did exactly what it said on the tin!
- Excellent Speaker–good topic–interesting discussion.
- Great presenter. Good info. Would have liked to see a few more technical examples. Good overview of deployment issues.
- He answered all my questions and saved me valuable time in guess work
- I found this presentation very helpful and found the speaker easy to identify with.
- Presenter seem real knowledgeable on the topic and seemed to appeal to many of the techies in the room.
- Totally relevent to where we are and what our issues are! Thanks!
- Very interesting and informative — hopefully this will help us dodge a few of these “gotchas”. Thanks!
- very knowledgable about issues that may be encountered, good advice on how to approach them for quicker resolution
- very well done, zach. timely topic, nicely presented.
- Zach held the best session I have been to all conference.
- Zachary is the Best presenter of the conference! Great presence with his audience!
- Zachary Tirrell was an excellent presenter, made the topic very interesting.
OK, so that is enough warm fuzzies to make me feel guilty about even posting it. Regardless, I have to say I would not have had any where near the success I have enjoyed with this if not for the support of the amazing MIS team I work with. Additionally, all aspects of ITS make any success we have with ventures like Luminis possible.
Summit 2006 rocked. From the great number of presentation we gave on varying topics, our Dan-athon through the Disney parks, the hilarious quotes extracted from our hugely entertaining group, to Laurianne’s participation in the closing session improv, Summit 2006 was a huge success for Plymouth State, my colleagues, and me personally. Here’s looking forward to Summit 2007 in Las Vegas!
Tags: conference, higher education, jon wheat, ldn, luminis, luminis developer's network, plymouth state university, presentation, sct, summit, sungard, sungard higher education, Zachary Tirrell
FaceBook - A Social Requirement in Higher Education
February 1, 2006 | 37 Comments
Facebook is a social site targeted at people associated with colleges and universities. Its popularity has gone through the roof this academic year, a quick peak at Alexa and you’ll see how drastically its rank spikes.
During the winter semester Jenny was taking a class. A fellow student contacted her and informed her that she was the only one in the 15+ student class who did not have an account on Facebook. In fact, he was a bit annoyed at her for this and felt she really needed to create an account.
The level of involvement students feel with Facebook is astounding. This social software has become the preferred collaborative environment for them. By choice. Not by some academic decree or because people thought students needed to use it. They chose this product for themselves.
Wondering if this one example was an oddity and not truly indicative of an overall trend at Plymouth State or higher education in general? Casey got the following from Facebook: “There are 3,975 registered users at Plymouth State University. Like the other schools on the site, over 60% of them log in every 24 hours.”
That means approximately 2,385 users are logging in to Facebook each day. Our campus portal gets around 3,800 uniques daily and we make it difficult for students not to use that…
Tags: education, face book, facebook, higher ed, higher education, plymouth state, plymouth state university, social, social software, university, web 2.0
Summit 2006 Presentation Proposals
October 3, 2005 | 2 Comments
I finally put together all my material to submit proposals for Summit presentations. I looked back at what we’ve been doing in the portal this year and the following is what I came up with. Overall it’s been a busy year, I was surprised to come up with as many as I did.
My Title: Portal Administrator and Senior Web Developer
My Bio
Zach Tirrell is from Plymouth State University in northern New Hampshire. Zach is both portal administrator and senior web developer for the institution. The main areas of his concentration revolve around integrating systems and identity management, Luminis has become a perfect enabler of this. He is often looking to get just a bit more out of Luminis than what is delivered.
Collecting Stats in Luminis
By leveraging the underlying UPortal infrastructure, learn how to take advantage of RDBMSStatsRecorder to generate detailed numbers on who is logging in, logging out, how often, and by role. You can then use these numbers to better understand how effective your portal strategy is. Tracking user adoption and growth over time becomes essential to decision making about the portal.
This presentation is for technical audiences.
YaleCAS in Luminis
One of the most common WebISO solutions is the Central Authentication Service developed by Yale (YaleCAS). In Luminis III.2 CAS became available as an installable module. Learn how to get YaleCAS installed, configured, and where it might fit in your organization. See how Plymouth State University has leveraged the phpCAS libraries to CAS’ify all their internally developed PHP web applications as well as a few third-party ones. What’s best, it only takes a couple lines of code!
This presentation is for technical audiences.
Luminis and Identity Management
While deploying Luminis, or maybe immediately after, lots of questions arise related to identity management. Are you using a central authentication point like LDAP or Active Directory? How do technologies like CPIP or YaleCAS fit into your authentication scheme? What applications should and can use SSO? Are you centrally managing authorization? Is shibboleth something you should be thinking about? How is your password policy? What’s you level of assurance on accounts you have assigned? All these questions and more will be discussed. Come prepared for lots of crowd participation.
LDI Implementation Tips and Tricks
Plymouth State University is starting to reap the rewards of its integrated campus portal strategy. PSU started its Banner migration in 2001, deployed Campus Platform 3 with its legacy SIS in 2002, publicly deployed Banner in 2003, and in 2004 with the migration to Luminis and implementation of LDI for eLearning, has finally reached “critical mass.” Luminis provides the infrastructure and LDI provides the glue that connects Banner, WebCT, the library, and other services. The presentation details Plymouth State University’s implementation and discusses the problems and solutions we faced along the way, with an emphasis on LDI and Luminis. Plymouth State has used this technology to realize the benefits of a unified digital campus.
This is a repeat from last year
Implement and Deploy Banner Channels
Banner 7 comes with a huge pile of exciting new channels. These channels greatly leverage the relationship between Luminis and Banner, however, implementation is complicated and deployment even more so. Banner channels are fantastic, but they need to be rolled out carefully. Plymouth State University has already run this gauntlet, come hear some of the concerns and pitfalls so you can avoid them yourself.
Tags: active directory, banner, campus portal, cas, channel, channels, identity management, integrate, integrated, integration, ldap, luminis, php, plymouth state university, portal, sct, sso, summit, sungard, sungardsct, tirrell, webiso, yalecas, Zach Tirrell, Zachary Tirrell
Millenials, Retirement, and Harry Potter
August 27, 2005 | 5 Comments
Over the last three days I have found myself in a lecture hall each morning, each for different reasons. First it was because of my adjunct faculty duties, next as a general employee, and finally as a member if ITS.
On Wednesday it was to watch the Plymouth State “Faculty Day” keynote presentation by William Strauss titled “Millenials Go To College”.
According to his website, here is a brief explanation of this generation:
The Millennial Generation (Hero?, born 1982-?) first arrived when “Babies on Board” signs appeared. As abortion and divorce rates ebbed, the popular culture began stigmatizing hands-off parental styles and recasting babies as special. Child abuse and child safety became hot topics, while books teaching virtues and values became best-sellers. Today, politicians define adult issues (from tax cuts to deficits) in terms of their effects on children. Hollywood is replacing cinematic child devils with child angels, and cable TV and the internet are cordoning off “child-friendly” havens. While educators speak of “standards” and “cooperative learning,” school uniforms are surging in popularity. With adults viewing children more positively, U.S. test scores are faring better in international comparisons.
The Millenials are a generation in his “Hero” archetype. Here is a brief summary of this archetype:
We remember Heroes best for their collective coming-of-age triumphs [...] and for their hubristic elder achievements. [...] All have been aggressive advocates of economic prosperity and public optimism in midlife; and all have maintained a reputation for civic energy and competence even deep into old age.
Overall, Strauss presented a fascinating topic and did it well. I left with hope for the future generation and excitement about helping in my small way to bring them to greatness.
More resources on Millenials:
Pedablogue: Millennials Go to College
Millenials Rising Book Site
William Strauss Books on Amazon
On Thursday, all employees at Plymouth State were called together by President Wharton. We did not know what he was planning to tell us. The big announcement was his planned retirement, effective June 30, 2006.
From Plymouth State Office of Public Relations:
Dr. Wharton is in his 13th year as president and is the 13th president at Plymouth State. He has been the steward of significant changes at the institution, including the transition in 2003 from Plymouth State College to Plymouth State University.
[...]
Under Dr. Wharton’s leadership the Plymouth State campus has changed significantly—adding new buildings such as the Hartman Union Building, Lamson Library, the Draper Maynard building, Prospect Dining Hall, and most recently the Boyd Science Center. In addition, the demolition of the old power plant and associated buildings and construction of the co-generation facility created more green space and the conversion of town streets to campus walkways. This past spring the University broke ground for the new Langdon Woods Student Housing Complex, which will add 347 new beds to campus housing in an effort to have a larger percentage of students reside on campus.
Finally on Friday all of Information Technology Services gathered for some inspiring words from CIO Dwight Fischer. The new group of student staff was introduced and hopefully made to feel at home. After giving a list of of things causing us all stress, it became clear, this was also a list of the great and innovative things we are doing on campus: deploying McAfee Virus Scan and ePolicy Orchestrator, increased integrated services, further deployment of multimedia classrooms, and more. Fischer then made some insightful comparisons between IT and Harry Potter, though sadly the only one I remember is “we learn good spells to counter the ever growing number of evil ones.”
Overall, as a week to ramp up for the beginning of another semester in higher education, this was an inspiring one.
Tags: donald wharton, dwight fischer, generations, higher education, millenials, nh, plymouth, plymouth state university, retirement, speeches, strauss, wharton, william strauss