Ready for pre-alpha virtualization testers

We are ready for pre-alpha external testing of running Rhaptos on Amazon Web Services. You will need an AWS account. We have tested starting instances from an Ubuntu laptop and from Mac OS X and now we are ready for others to test these initial configurations.

The instructions are here: https://trac.rhaptos.org/trac/rhaptos/wiki/AWSQuickInstall

The following two configurations should work:

1. rhaptos-partial-32 : Rhaptos instance connected to a sample set of data for demos and exploration. It takes about 5 - 10 minutes to build and then another 5-10 minutes for reindexing the sample data set to use the amazon URL your instance is running on.
2. rhaptos-empty-32-dev : A Rhaptos instance that starts with a machine image with system dependencies installed and then builds all the Rhaptos code from a known working release. Takes about 5-10 minutes to start the machine that does the building and then about 20 minutes for the build.
   

Known issues so far: The workgroup links in the left navigation bar have the URL doubled and thus 404. You can hand fix the URL to get to the workgroup. We are looking into this. You will probably find something we didn't.

We are testing the clarity of the instructions, as well as the functionality of the result. We would love to hear feedback on how it goes. Please email cnx@cnx.org with your results and the rhaptos software development list (rhaptos@cnx.rice.edu) (which you have to join first).

Consortium member, Shuttleworth, funds performance improvement specification

Read Mark Horner's blog entry "Connexions Authoring Performance" for the full detail about the specification they funded for improving the performance of authoring on Connexions. Mark is a Shuttleworth fellow and The Shuttleworth Foundation is a Connexions consortium member. They have been using Connexions, developing new features for Connexions, and funding the creation of specifications for new features that may need additional funding to get off the ground

From Mark's blog:

"... the bottom-line is that Upfront Systems have shown that there are massive potential performance improvements (in some cases 5 times faster) for Connexions on the authoring side and analysed what it will take to implement them. I estimate that the total cost of implementing the specification is $7500."

This is exactly the sort of dynamic engagement we hoped would come out of the Connexions Consortium.

You can read the full reports at:

• Analysis of performance (Open Office format)
• Draft specification to develop the fixes to the problems identified. (Open Office format)

Supporting the Life Cycle of Scholarly Work

From research to the classroom

What students are learning today is often the result of cutting edge research in the past, and what advanced students are learning and incorporating is often today's research. So we are making it easier for content to move from publication in open research journals to publication in the Connexion open education repository. We are collaborating with the Public Knowledge Project, makers of OJS (Open Journal System) software, to support exporting content from journals and importing it to Connexions. The two teams are each implementing SWORD (Simple Web Service Offering Repository Deposit) to accomplish the transfer. Connexions SWORD support design is shown on our development site and implementation began in March.

From Connexions to reuse anywhere

We collect all sorts of statistics about use of the Connexions content from Connexions website, but often students and teachers download the content in various formats and use it remotely. Connexions explicitly supports reuse of content inside OR outside the repository. We try to make it easy to use the content in whatever way is most appropriate for educators and learners. But, we still want to know when the content is downloaded. Our current Google Analytics setup doesn't provide that information and so we have updated the code to collect information about content downloads. Testing is underway on the statistics enhancements. As an added benefit, consistent use of analytics across services makes comparisons and research on content usage more accurate.

Virtualization Update

As many of you know, Connexions has teamed up with two contractor teams to develop virtualized versions of Connexions and Rhaptos. Virtualization of the Connexions platform will allow production environments to be scaled as demand increases and decreases, will be fault tolerant regarding hardware malfunction, will support rapid testing, and will support providing demonstration instances of the software when needed. Virtualization will also make running Enterprise Rhaptos instances easier and make providing hosting services for Rhaptos instances a cost-effective third-party service.

We have a diagram of the various options that are being created. To follow along with some of the work as it is in progress, we have a milestone for virtualization in trac. Because the contractors use their own development systems, the milestone doesn't have everything that is going on.

As this work progresses, we will be requesting that external teams start testing some of the intermediate milestones of the virtualization project. Please let us know (email cnx@cnx.org) if you want to be included in that beta testing.

Feedback from community members on the Connexions Conference

Tom Caswell makes several very interesting comments about Connexions, Rhaptos, and the Connexions conference on the OCW blog, "Good things brewing at 2nd Connexions conference." He was particularly interested in the release of Enterprise Rhaptos, the MathML editor, Google Analytics for authors, and potential Common Cartridge support. He also encouraged us as a developer community to really concentrate on a simple HTML editor for Connexions and on how Enterprise Rhaptos and cnx.org (the "mothership") will cohere as network of repositories in the future. My response has pointers to more information on the features he was interested in and pointers to experimental work on HTML editing in the Connexions shop.

Extreme Makeover - Documentation Edition

With the release of Enterprise Rhaptos, we have improved the documentation on the Rhaptos Trac wiki. The documentation has been expanded and rearranged, and includes much deeper technical documentation.

The Rhaptos Trac wiki home page now has quick links at the top of the page to information about Enterprise Rhaptos, Connexions/Rhaptos Development, APIs for Accessing Data and Test and Quality Assurance.

Enterprise Rhaptos

The Enterprise Rhaptos documentation includes a quick install page that can have you running Rhaptos in only a few minutes. The install uses Buildout and can install the Rhaptos software on your Debian Linux server. Enterprise Rhaptos is also changing the way we do development internally at Connexions. We can build development instances much faster than before and the code structure in Subversion (SVN) has changed. There is a clean separation between Rhaptos and Connexions code which has led us to have 2 top level folders in SVN, rhaptos and cnx. The previous method was for each product to be in a top level folder.

Connexions/Rhaptos Development

Connexions/Rhaptos Development starts with links to our mailing lists, this blog and some older developer blogs on the rhaptos.org site. If you are thinking of doing some development, please sign up for our mailing lists. There is lots of good information being passed around, but not so much that it will fill your inbox everyday. There is a Roadmap of our plans for Connexions development through June 2010.

Technical Documentation

Technical Documentation is where we have expanded and added the most documentation. We now have instructions for installing Rhaptos and Connexions. There is also a Buildout FAQ to help troubleshoot your installation. As part of Enterprise Rhaptos, Connexions has created a large body of Selenium tests for the site. These have been exported into Python. Details of running these tests with Buildbot or manually are now documented. We are starting to use Buildbot as a continuous build system for our development. This should help us find defects earlier in the development process and improve our code quality.

Code Documentation has been added and brings some much needed information about Connexions and Rhaptos source code. There is documentation covering each product in Connexions, some general Plone information and a few tips and tricks. Also covered is most of the functionality in Connexions such as Collection Editing, Content Rendering, Edit In Place, Lenses, MathML Message Behavior, Module Editing, Monkey Patching, Printing, Schemas and Workgroups.

APIs for Accessing Data

This section has links to information about our RSS feeds, URL's to get rendered pages of content, member profiles, lenses, statistics, etc. and Open Archives metadata harvesting. Also included are links about downloaded and branding Connexions content. Kathi wrote an earlier blog post about this on the Connexions blog.

Test and Quality Assurance

Test and Quality Assurance remains to be improved and cleaned up. However, there is some useful information in the Test Plan section. We have used several of these to create our new Selenium tests.

Our hope is to continue improving our documentation with help from the Connexions team, Consortium members, authors and users. If you are interested in contributing or have a comment about the new documentation, just let us know at cnx@cnx.org.

Welcome to Connexions and Rhaptos Software Development Blog

What is Rhaptos?

• The name for the open-source licensed software developed and used by Connexions.
• An Ancient Greek adjective that refers to things stitched or sewn together.
• Software to enable authors, instructors, and students to create, select, and assemble modular educational content into collections customized to meet their teaching and learning needs.

Features

• Modular content that can be combined and reused in many ways
  
• Version control with permanently referenceable versions
• Semantic XML-based content
• Lenses for endorsing, recommending, or suggesting content
  

Getting Started with Rhaptos Development

• Installation Guide
• Mailing Lists
• Development Roadmap Overview
• Bug System Some of our most active development and design is detailed in the Trac bug system
• Request an account Need to contact us or request an account? -- Email cnx@cnx.org and tell us a bit about yourself. You do not need an account to add or comment about bugs in the bug system or to see or use any of the source code.