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From: Todd Whittaker (WhittakT_at_franklin.edu)
Date: Mon Apr 25 2005 - 15:03:25 EDT 

Message-Id: <s26d06c3.084@gw.franklin.edu>
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:03:25 -0400
From: "Todd Whittaker" <WhittakT_at_franklin.edu>
Subject: Re: Web-CAT hosting


I have some answers here, based on recommendations from our IT folks.

  1. We're going to go with just Tomcat for now. We may roll out mod_jk2 when the box hits production, but that's yet to be determined.
  2. We'll probably _not_ go with SSL right now, but may go ahead with that in the future depending on (1) as you said.
  3. We're going to do local DB authentication for now. The LDAP structure here is undergoing some transitions to support clustering and single sign-on. But, the IT guys posed this question: "Is there anything published about the how Web-CAT's authentication modules work and the state of their LDAP piece? It would be useful if we could pass that on to our consultant." The consultant is evaluating the LDAP structure.

I also now have a WebObjects license key. Next steps?

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

>>> Stephen Edwards <edwards_at_cs.vt.edu> 04/16/05 05:12PM >>>
> 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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