Ilias Conference / ECS

Heiko Bernlöhr

Software by FreeIT.de

Motivation

Show you the main usage scenario.
Show you a basic view at ECS and how it works.
Qualifying you to determine if you could use ECS in further projects and environments.
Let you estimate the effort for install, configure and running an ECS.

Main Tasks / Features of ECS

Interconnect LMSs and CMSs (Figure)

#LMSs: Ilias, Moodle, StudIP
#CMSs: HIS/LSF

Should scale in wide range

#REST architecture, based on HTTP as transport and application protocol #could use WEB/HTTP infrastructure (see also "Resources and API")

Loose coupling
Easy to use (REST-) API

uniform interface (CRUD)
well defined resources

Community Concept

Only participants joining the same community could communicate i.e. send each other messages.
It's possible to address a whole community.

#point to multipoint #point to point

Participants can join multiple communities. This mean they can overlap (Figure).

Resources and API

Unique identification of objects through URL.
Uniform Interface (CRUD)

create ⇒ POST
read ⇒ GET
update ⇒ PUT
delete ⇒ DELETE

All ECS resources understand these directives.

#show and explain system and application resources and the several types: # * system resources (events, memberships, auths) # * application resources (message, list, queue) #show querystrings

All components (applications) speaking HTTP could communicate with the ECS. E.g. curl, wget, Proxy-Server, Caches, HTTP-Server, ...

ECS in action

The ECS is currently used in several projects and environments

CampusConnect
ViP
OMWeb

For a usage demonstration I want to show its playing role in a standard CampusConnect scenario:

One community called "Hochschulkooperation"
9 participants (each are Ilias systems from different universities).

#show Production ECS: Communities, Participants #show Production Ilias: ECS configuration, lecturer course release interface #change import filter to allow export to FreeIT Testparticipant

ECS Communication practice

Establish a courselink in the Ilias of University of Stuttgart.

Using curl as a full command line participant.
Addressing
Special headers
Querystrings
sys/memberships json representation
campusconnect/courselinks json representation

#establish a courselink #delete the courselink #update the courselink #create new community and join the FreeIT-Testparticipant and Ilias then post to community.

ECS Installation and configuration

Downloads or GIT
Ruby and Rails
Databases

#PostgreSql, mysql, sqlite, ...

Application servers

#Phusion Passenger, unicorn, thin, ...

Configuration Templates
Apache Webserver

Proxy
Authentication plugins

Updates

Current development

new LMS objects (NRW Juris)
Close integration of HIS/LSF -- Ilias -- Moodle -- StudIP ⇒ CampusConnect
Interconnection of ECS

Stuttgart/6.9.2012