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From: Todd Whittaker (WhittakT_at_franklin.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 24 2005 - 13:43:48 EST 

Message-Id: <s242c421.049@gw.franklin.edu>
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 13:43:48 -0500
From: "Todd Whittaker" <WhittakT_at_franklin.edu>
Subject: Re: Web-CAT hosting


Steve,

Okay, we've met with our IT organization, and they're going to get us a beefy workstation with which we can prototype, and we'll eventually migrate to a server at our off-site hosting facility. We're going to try to get it to go on Linux, but will fall back to Win2K if we run into trouble (since that would match your deployment).

Our IT organization had some questions: 1. You're working with Perl under Win2K. Did you write anything that used the Win32 Perl libraries, or was it platform independent code? 2. What versions would we need for the JDK, Tomcat, and MySQL? Hopefully things will work with Java 5, since that's what we're hoping to use in the fall for our courses. I know you wrote it for JDK 1.4, but I don't know if your grading language and your deployment language can be different.

We're looking at having a machine to start working on as soon as next week. What kind of time do you have for attempting an off-site deployment? We're reasonably knowledgeable, and wouldn't want to pester you too much, but I'm sure it will somewhat distracting. Is e-mail the best venue for questions? Or would you prefer something on the Web-CAT Wiki?

Thanks,

--
Todd A. Whittaker
Program Chair, Information Technology
Franklin University
614-744-3067
whittakt_at_franklin.edu

>>> Stephen Edwards <edwards_at_cs.vt.edu> 03/15/05 09:28AM >>>
> We are seriously interested in hosting.

Great! Let's try to make it work.

> since our courses are actually pressed on CD in July, we'd need to have a
 > pretty good run at getting this done by the end of June.

OK, that sounds reasonable, although it will be some work.

> Our major platform is RedHat Enterprise Linux 3, which will run Java and
 > Tomcat with no trouble.

It will also run everything else we need. The only caveat is that I've never set it up or installed it on that OS :-). I do have a local machine running Mandrake here that I was planning to use for testing purposes, so we do have that available to try out some things.

> We'll get a WebObjects license too.

Great. Our bookstore here on campus carries the educational discount version for $99, and I believe Apple's on-line store does too, so you should be able to get hold of a copy easily. Make sure it is version 5.2.x, not an older version.

Note that Apple does not sell a version marked as "compatible" with Linux. Instead, they have only one version, that comes with CDs for Mac OS X, Windows 2000, and Solaris, all in the same box. Many stores stock this in the Apple software section, and don't even know it supports other platforms (in case you go to your campus bookstore, or OSU's or something).

The problem is that the installation/setup program(s) and a couple of the development tools are untested (or won't work) on other platforms so Apple only says OS X/Win2K/Solaris on the box, and that is all they officially support.

The best news is that all you really need is the official "deployment" license number out of the box--you won't need to worry about installing or setting up WebObjects at all. The Web-CAT distribution we'll use has all the "pure Java" run-time libraries from WebObjects bundled into one servlet WAR file for installation under Tomcat, and all you'll need is your WebObjects license number in order to run.

> So, that leaves a couple of architectural questions:
>
> 1. You said that Web-CAT is two basic components: the server which 

 > receives and time stamps submissions, and a set of scripts that kick off
 > the grading process in a sandbox-type down environment.  Do we
 > need two separate platforms (one for the server, and one for the scripts)

No, just one. Basically, the server will fork separate processes on its own server to invoke the scripts as needed.

> 2. What database can/should we use for the server?

MySQL, definitely. Other ODBC databases should work in theory, but haven't been tested. You can install/configure MySQL on the same host as the Web-CAT server, or on a different host. Up to you.

-- 

Stephen Edwards            604 McBryde Hall          Dept. of Computer Science
e-mail      : edwards_at_cs.vt.edu           U.S. mail: Virginia Tech (VPI&SU)
office phone: (540)-231-5723                         Blacksburg, VA  24061
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