june 13 – 15, 2010 project cloud 9 a z-powered learning environment by michael lavacca, sean...
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June 13 – 15, 2010
Project Cloud 9 a z-Powered Learning Environment
by Michael Lavacca, Sean Goldsmith, Deyaa Abuelsaad, and
Sean Dunn
MARIST/IBM Joint Studies
June 13 – 15, 2010
Our Goal
The enablement of the Sakai application on IBM’s WebSphere Application Server and
DB2 software, and the System Z Mainframe.
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• Sakai is an “adaptable, interoperable, reliable, scalable, and flexible enterprise application that supports teaching, learning and scholarly collaboration.”
• The Sakai Community develops and distributes the open-source Sakai CLE, an enterprise-ready collaboration and courseware management platform that provides users with a suite of learning, portfolio, library and project tools.
• Sakai’s open approach allows institutions to deploy, host and modify
What is Sakai?
the software in whatever manner best supports the institutions skills, needs and goals.
• Sakai’s open development process allows local enhancements to be incorporated into future versions of the software.
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Overview of Sakai
•160+ production sites•1M+ Users•110 institutional
members•60 core developers
Teaching ToolsAssignmentsGradebook
Tests & Quizzes Module Editor
Section ManagementSyllabus
Sakai Functionality
Portfolio ToolsForms
EvaluationsGlossaryMatricesLayouts
TemplatesReportsWizards
AnnouncementsDrop BoxEmail ArchiveResourcesChat RoomForumsThreaded DiscussionMessage CenterMessage Of The DayNews/RSS
Preferences PresentationProfile / RosterRepository SearchScheduleSearchWeb ContentWebDAVWikiSite Setup
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Example - iLearn
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Challenges
• Sakai 2.6 was a ‘moving target’• Our contributions affected multiple components• Approximately 60 issues
– 4 critical, 45 major, 8 minor, 3 trivial
• Issues– Differences between Sun JRE and IBM JRE
– Differences between Tomcat and Websphere
• Integrating with rSmart’s DB2 work• Resolved issues via coding or configuration changes
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Project Timeline(dates are 2008-2009 unless otherwise mentioned)
• Notified Sakai Foundation about our goal to implement Websphere and DB2 support (2/28)
• Created JIRA to track feature (4/21)• Created screencast (5/29)• Created Sakai Confluence section (6/13)• Bootcamp (6/6)• Initial test of Sakai on Websphere (6/13)• Announced on Sakai devlist (6/17)• Submitted CCLA and CLA and gained IBM OSSC approval• Development - Continuous testing and bug fixing (6/16-9/17)• Called for vote on Sakai devlist for merge (9/18)• Accepted and merged (9/23)• Code Freeze (9/29)• QA and bug fixes (10/01/08 – release of 2.6 on 07/15/09)• Development to support 2.7 release (07/09 – Present)
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Process DiagramTester Developer Tool Owner
Discover WAS related Issue
Create JIRA issue
Verify (reproduce) issue
Develop & create fix
Lead Developer
Verify fix in Development Environment (WAS &
Tomcat)
Verify Issue & assign to
appropriate developer
Review fix & assign JIRA to tester
Create patch & attach to JIRA
issue
Verify fix on Testing
Environment (WAS & Tomcat)
Commit patch to branch & request
branch merge from tool owner
Review patch & merge if approved
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Automated Testing
Introducing Selenium IDE: The workhorse of QA!
• Selenium IDE is a Firefox Add-On developed by OpenQA that allows for Agile Testing.
• Selenium allows for quick and easy automated test creation through a combination of recordable actions and HTML.
• We chose Selenium as a testing tool because of the necessity for reusable, scalable, and automatable test scripts that could be executed in a much shorter
time span than manual testing.
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Lessons Learned
July 2009 1110th Sakai Conference - Boston, MA, U.S.A.
• Implement a well-defined internal process that complements the community’s development process
• Use available automated testing tools to keep up with the community’s development pace
• Communicate with the community
• Start early in the project
• Use community tools to share information (JIRA’s, Wiki, Weekly Calls, Sakai Devlist)
• The community is helpful, ask for guidance when needed
• Present at Sakai conference
• Consider partnering with an educational institute
• Provide access to the commercial components of your project
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Grinder
• Open-Source Java based load testing framework
• Can simulate hundreds of unique users on a web application
• Reports statistics for HTTP method calls to Grinder console
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Tuning Environment
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Tuning Results
We found the optimal environment for Sakai using WAS/DB2 on zLinux to be:
• 2 virtual CPUs defined in Linux • 2 GB of memory defined in Linux • Two swap partitions
1.Swap-1 (97.644 MB) 2.Swap-2 (781.156 MB)
• WebSphere Servlet cache enabled • WebSphere Heap Size set to 256 MB - 1280 MB
Using these parameters, performance was found to increase by 185% for 25 users from the original configuration. A graph comparing the two configurations is shown below.
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WAS/DB2 Mainframe Original Config vs. New Config
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WAS/DB2 Mainframe vs. WAS/DB2 Blade
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SOLUTIONThe final product and present &
future directions
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zSakai Environment
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Cloud 9 Environment
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Landing Page
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Sakai Skins
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AP/College Chemistry Course
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Marist/IBM Academic Cloud
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Learning Management Software
• Management
• Collaboration
• Content
Business Intelligence
Business Analytics
• Cognos
• SPSS
• TM1Virtual Desktops
Collaborative Development Software
• Rational Team Concert• RDz / Eclipse
z/OS Environment• DB2• WAS• CICS• IMS• ISPF • z/OS Test Drive Images