IMS-ENT Author: Rocael Hernandez (roc@viaro.net), Viaro Networks Date: 17-June-2004 The purpouse of this package is to handle any IMS Enterprise v.1.1 XML document, and reflect all the respective data into .LRN. Please read http://imsglobal.org/enterprise/ for more infomation. Note: I found this best practice guide:http://www.imsglobal.org/enterprise/entv1p1/imsent_bestv1p1.html Basically, what the XML will reflects are 3 things: 1. Users. 2. Departments, Subjects and classes (and its relation between them). 3. Relation between users and classes, and proper roles. Right now, what ims-ent does is to mimic what the acs-authentication did for #1, but adding also the functionality of #2 & #3. Parameters: The parameters: department, subject, class should contain the value that tell us if a tag represents one of them, look at the examples below. (if a is not specified / valid one, the parser will not process those , must match with some of the parameter values above) i.e. level = 1 for departments Add a new department (carrera : INGENIERIA EN ELECTRONICA, INFORMATICA Y CIENCIAS DE LA COMPUTACION) Universidad Galileo IE Universiad Galileo .... level = 2 for subjects, note: relation = 1 indicates which group is the parent and relation = 2 is not used by the parser as a first choice Add a new class CO205 , SEMINARIO TEORIA DE SISTEMAS I Galileo University Database IE___CO205 Galileo University SEMINARIO TEORIA DE SISTEMAS I Universidad Galileo IE class CO205 Galileo University Database IE UDB Class CO205, seccion A CO205___A .... level = 3 for classes, Add a new seccion (curso: CO205 , seccion: A) Universidad Galileo CO205___A Galileo University SEMINARIO TEORIA DE SISTEMAS I, Seccion A 2004-01-13 2004-06-04 2004-01-13 - 2004-06-04 Galileo University Database IE___CO205 Note the relation of the class (group) with the its subject (parent group). If a relation is not found, it will try to search in the same document for a group that has this group as a child (relation = 2), if not will give you an error. Using the you can implement the hierarchy like: Dep-->Sub-->Class (the only hierarchy supported by .LRN now) we expect the roletype attribute: This is the actual mapping between standard roles defined in the document (http://imsglobal.org/enterprise/entv1p1/imsent_infov1p1.html#1427710) and the ones defined @ .LRN: 2 { dotlrn_instructor_rel } 7 5 { dotlrn_cadmin_rel } 3 { return dotlrn_ca_rel } 6 8 { dotlrn_ta_rel } 4 1 { dotlrn_student_rel } this is a normal tag: Universidad Galileo A3606___A Universidad Galileo 16001 ...... (we expect at least this information, which is the only that will be used) UserIdReturnProc this is a proc that must return the user_id, based on: 1. the person id that we get from the XML document 2. the -authority_id $authority_id that we will get from the system (the proc must accept this: -authority_id $authority_id, i.e. acs_user::get_by_username -username, the first param to be sent to the proc is the id form the user), i.e. by defualt is set --> acs_user::get_by_username -username, which will be called and sent as username the that comes from the XML (by default that is stored in the username when you import users using ims-ent), but you might call another proc that might be useful to get the user_id based on your own needs, for standard use, the default value is good. Configuration: 1. Create a new authority, that handle IMS Enteprise (Batch Synchronization Section). 2. As a sync method you can configure http-get, file system or xml-rpc. 3. Now you can: "Configure drivers for this authority" (fill with the appropriate data) 4. Now press on: "Run new batch job now" and will import all the data and create the respective stuff (this process might take a bunch of time, depending on how much info do you have). (Then for each job, you'll get more information about each transaction processed) http-get: define a valid URL to grab the XML. (i.e. http://mysite.com/ims-ent-snapshot.xml) file system: a local file in your server directories to grab the XML. (i.e. /myfiles/ims-ent/incremental-update.xml) xml-rpc: a valid method in a valid RPC host. (i.e. host: http://mysite.com/RPC2 method: IMSEntSnapshot) What about Terms: When creating the terms, will search for the best* term that fits between the dates specified in the tag, and will return it. If none fits, will create one automatically with start/end date defined in the document. If the tag is not provided with start / end date, it will select the term that ends most late. * by "best" we mean the term that fits the start/end date that ends the later. (though that can be easily changed, see: ims_enterprise::ims_dotlrn::groups::guess_term) A lot of rules can be done here, but I wanted to keep it simple so anyone else can easily extend to their needs. Mapping IMS enterprise to .LRN: For depatment, subject & class, we use: <--> pretty_name <--> description <--> external_url (just for deps) Additional notes: * It handles snapshot for membership since it do checks now for those persons that do not continue to be members (that are not comming as transactions from the incremental process). Not supported yet: * communities * sub-groups * mapping relation of the type department-->subject-->class using the tag, we see that this tag is more oriented in the case of a class to a sub-class relation rather than between the ones mentioned (since in .LRN we don't use at all a dep or sub portal). To make a relation between dep-sub-cla use the to indicate the parent(1) or child(2). * Deal with photos from