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From: Stephen Edwards (edwards_at_cs.vt.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 16 2005 - 17:12:15 EDT 

Message-ID: <42617FAF.40707@cs.vt.edu>
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 17:12:15 -0400
From: Stephen Edwards <edwards_at_cs.vt.edu>
Subject: Re: Web-CAT hosting


> Okay, I think we're just about ready to try something with WebCAT.

Things are looking good. Here are the next three items.

  1. Determine how students will access tomcat applications. In particular, do you want them to connect directly to tomcat (e.g., using port 8080), or do you want them to go through your web server (say, using mod_jk2 or something under apache). You might want to ask your sysadmins which they'd prefer. It doesn't matter to Web-CAT at all (either will work equally well), but may affect response speeds from the server. We are currently using mod_jk2, which is what our sysadmin recommended.
  2. Set up SSL if you want to use it. Again, it doesn't matter to Web-CAT, but is a security choice you must make. We have run both ways. We recently switched over to using SSL using our department's certificate. This may interact with (1) above. For example, by installing an SSL certificate for apache and using mod_jk2, you can get full SSL support for all tomcat applications. Alternatively, you can also install a certificate for tomcat itself, so that it can provide SSL communications independently of apache. Again, consult your sysadmin for local preferences.
  3. Choose a user authentication scheme. Web-CAT has a plug-in-based mechanism for validating login credentials so that it is easy to change the mechanism that is used (or even use different mechanisms for different groups of users). Web-CAT can hold its own passwords internally within its database, or it can use an external authentication service--for example, authenticating against a POP server, an LDAP server, a custom university-wide authentication service, etc. If you have a central service that manages site-wide or university-wide passwords, you may want to use that. For this item, first, decide what you want to use. Second, if it is a university-specific service, you'll need to find out what is necessary to access it from within Java. We have a standard interface for plug-in classes of this nature, and I can help implement it or you can do it yourself.

I don't think these will take too much time. Let me know how things go ...

BTW, I'm in the process of setting up a listserv with a web archive of its traffic that we (and others) can use. I'm also forming a student-run advisory board for Web-CAT here at VT to provide some student input and also to give students a voice in prioritizing changes/feature requests. Once this is formed in the next few weeks, I'll put them up on the wiki.

-- 

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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