I am planning on removing the "single tool" support from SakaiPlus for Sakai 25

[Charles Severance]

Hi all,

Please review the description in https://sakaiproject.atlassian.net/browse/SAK-50165

It lays out the reason I am planning to remove single tool support from SakaiPlus for Sakai 25.

The short version is that while the sakai.site use case in a new window is solid and reliable - the single tool in an iframe inside another LMS was never very reliable.  It worked during developer testing (and it was a ton of work to build) - but once QA started driving into the corners of the tools working inside of an iframe - stuff just started falling apart.  The above JIRA lists a few bugs - but I asked Andrea to stop testing it given that almost every time it was touched a new bug was found and they wer yucky bugs that were not problems with Plus itself - they were tool problems where they interact with outer navigation (sigh).

This removes some pretty intricate code and focuses on the SakaiPlus sakai.site use case that folks seem to want.  Also the normal sakai.site use case can be adjusted to use one tool if someone really wants it - just not inside of an iframe without any left or top navigation.

Happy to chat in the core, teaching and learning, or OA calls and answer any questions you might have.  Feel free to make a comment on the JIRA.

I won’t start on this for a few weeks to make sure folks have a chance to comment.

/Chuck

[bernardo.garcia]

Hi,

I think it makes a lot of sense what you're saying in there, nothing against it from our side. Thanks for the effort!

On a different matter, we're in talks with a client in order to expand the sakai.site use case for supporting existing sites. I think this was discussed in the past and you said it wasn't in the roadmap, but we've heard the request from a couple institutions when talking about Sakai+ and it might help giving it a push. Just wanted to know your current view on this.

Thanks and regards.

[Charles Severance]

Bernie,

Thanks for that idea - your use case fits into the emerging “shared course repository” role of SakaiPlus.  As I remove single tool, I will be wandering by all the code and data model that could support the use case - I will keep it front of mind to see the best way to add the feature.

/Chuck

[Bernardo Garcia Vila]

Thanks! Keep us posted

[Wilma Hodges]

While I do think the single tool use case is still a valid scenario, I agree with removing support for it since there is no one actively pushing for this feature at the moment. It is better to not have the option, than to have a single tool option that is riddled with problems. Making it work on a single tool basis would take a lot of effort that could be better spent on things that have wider use in the community right now. I think the workaround of having a single site with only one tool active in the site is a reasonable alternative.

Wilma 

Wilma Hodges, Ed.D., UXC

Director of Training & eLearning Initiatives

Longsight, Inc.

wi...@longsight.com 

www.longsight.com

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[Steve Swinsburg]

Hi Chuck,

Will any of this impact the Basic LTI support, particularly the Sakai Connector Portlet / Basic LTI Portlet that is used in uPortal?

These portlets I wrote ages ago essentially allow a single tool to be embedded in another portlet enabled platform.

I will admit I haven't been following the Sakai Plus work so apologies if this is completely unrelated.

cheers,

Steve

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[Charles Severance]

Steve,

Always glad to hear from you. The simple answer is that there will be no impact. However, given how tool markup has evolved since we eliminated iframes, it is pretty likely that the old Connector would end up pretty unsatisfactory today - not the connector itself - just the tools once the connector placed them in an iframe.

Sakai Plus was a 100% fork of the connector at the beginning. But I make a complete copy in the plus folder and then replaced about 80% of it. The old connector was LTI 1.1 only and the new connector was LTI 1.3 only. The way grades work in each so so different that there was very little value in trying to make anything common. Lets the old connector embrace LTI 1.1 100% and let the new connector embrace LTI 1.3 100% and don’t confuse things trying to make one piece of code handle very divergent and conflicting grading architectures.

The said, if you look at the plus code, it will feel familiar. Because I borrowed a lot from the LTI 1.1 connector. It was pretty elegant and having working code to provision users, sites, and realms really accelerated my work to develop plus - so thanks for that.

/Chuck

[Charles Severance]

Hi all,

Yeaterday morning I started digging around in the SakaiPlus code wondering how long it would take to completely remove the single tool use case:

https://sakaiproject.atlassian.net/browse/SAK-50165

I started deleting code to see how much other stuff would break.  It went really smoothly, and by early after noon it was done except for a few more hours of testing and cleanup.  It is up for testing at:

https://devplus.sakaicloud.com/portal

The code is in a draft PR request.

https://github.com/sakaiproject/sakai/pull/12635

Feel free to go and look around.  The biggest UI change is the remove of the “Allowed Tools” and “New Window Tools” in the Plus Admin tool.  Otherwise it has very little UI change except if you try to launch sakai.resources or send a Deep Link request to it.

This of course will require adjustments (mostly deletions) to the QA scripts.

Comments welcome.

/Chuck

[Steve Swinsburg]

Hi Chuck,

Ok that's good to know. I'll try to dip my toes back in, I am sure it will all feel very familiar once I get back in!

cheers,

Steve