Sage via Moodle, an easy way to get ldap?

[Peter]

Hi,

There has been some discussion and work on having the Sage Notebook
authenticate via ldap (see e.g.
http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/browse_thread/thread/e4d3e170582cad98/9ad45ecd9b011c01?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=ldap#9ad45ecd9b011c01
)

I would be very interested in having such a solution on our campus,
but unfortunately I have no technical background that would allow me
to help implement this project (I will gladly test an available
solution on our sage server if I can figure out how to do this).

However my question is really the following: We already use the open
source course management system Moodle on campus with most of our math
classes, and this php based system already supports ldap
authentication (and the whole Moodle system is almost as easy to
install as Sage). So for students it would really be easier if they
only had to log in to Moodle (which they do on a daily basis anyway)
and then a Moodle course could have a link to Sage. The trick now is
to set things up so that when a student clicks on the Sage link, they
are automatically logged in to their own Sage notebook. Can someone
perhaps comment on how difficult it might be to get this to work?

Is this much worse or simpler than integrating ldap into Sage?

(There is some precedent with the Moodle-Webwork bridge, which we also
use.)

Sage has also been recently mentioned on some Moodle forums since it
is an option for evaluating answers of the Moodle Quiz module (see
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=98670 and
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=99401)

Thanks for any feedback.

Peter

[William Stein]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 11:02 AM, Peter <Peter....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> There has been some discussion and work on having the Sage Notebook
> authenticate via ldap (see e.g.
> http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/browse_thread/thread/e4d3e170582cad98/9ad45ecd9b011c01?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=ldap#9ad45ecd9b011c01
> )
>
> I would be very interested in having such a solution on our campus,
> but unfortunately I have no technical background that would allow me
> to help implement this project (I will gladly test an available
> solution on our sage server if I can figure out how to do this).
>
> However my question is really the following: We already use the open
> source course management system Moodle on campus with most of our math
> classes, and this php based system already supports ldap
> authentication (and the whole Moodle system is almost as easy to
> install as Sage). So for students it would really be easier if they
> only had to log in to Moodle (which they do on a daily basis anyway)
> and then a Moodle course could have a link to Sage. The trick now is
> to set things up so that when a student clicks on the Sage link, they
> are automatically logged in to their own Sage notebook. Can someone
> perhaps comment on how difficult it might be to get this to work?

I don't think it would be easier. Note there has been a ton of progress
on getting LDAP support into the Sage notebook recently.

> Is this much worse or simpler than integrating ldap into Sage?
>
> (There is some precedent with the Moodle-Webwork bridge, which we also
> use.)
>
> Sage has also been recently mentioned on some Moodle forums since it
> is an option for evaluating answers of the Moodle Quiz module (see
> http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=98670 and
> http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=99401)

I would be thrilled by some sort of nontrivial Sage/Moodle interaction.
The forums above mention such interaction actually, which i think
is pretty cool.

William

[Robert Bradshaw]

Yes, I have been thinking about doing something like this for a
while--this was the main motivation for the simple server stuff
(though I have been distracted with other stuff since then).

- Robert

[Mike Hansen]

I've been talking with Roger Moore, the guy who implemented the
algebra question type mentioned above as well. I'll be working on
this (the Sage / Moodle connection) later in August as it was
something requested by Amelia Taylor at the Macaulay2 workshop.

--Mike