Application integration

This week, I evaluated some open source wiki and blog engines based on ASP.NET in combination with idFS. I turned out that idFS is pretty straightforward to integrate with existing code, especially in cases where the application already makes use of the standard ASP.NET mechanisms for application security. In some cases, it was even possible to link the applications built-in roles with idFS roles without touching the code. I finally chose screwturn wiki and blogengine.net, which will be used for supplying a blog and a wiki for the ISWE site.

ICWE Paper Deadline extended

The deadline for this year’s ICWE conference is approaching. It has been extended to February 22, 2008. The Eighth International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE2008) will be held in July 2008 in Yorktown Heights, New York, USA. ICWE2008 aims at promoting research and scientific excellence on Web Engineering and at bringing together practitioners, scientists, and researchers interested in technologies, methodologies, tools, and techniques used to develop and maintain Web-based applications.

idFS Version 2.3

idFS Version 2.3 is complete and available for download. It includes some minor fixes and is adjusted to .NET 3.5 / Visual Studio 2008. In addition, I have installed updated online demo on a public web server. The case study in the Web Engineering practical course worked out well. All groups were able to integrate their application, although one group needed some help for configuring advanced features.

End of lecture period in Chemnitz

After 15 weeks of teaching, it’s the end of the lecture period in Chemnitz, and I’m staring into another golden period of two month of quality research time. The results from this semester’s student feedback reviews were good, but improvable. The students in the practical course rated the interestingness of their project with 5.75 / 7, generally stating that they would prefer a longer project phase and shorter exercise phase. The students in the lecture-related tutorial gave an average of 5 / 7 points, with several requests for more practical, programming-related exercises and less reading homework.

ISWE Site Developments

The ISWE site is currently undergoing redevelopment behind the scenes, as we add new management features. We switched over to .NET 3.5 to take advantage of the improved XML handling capabilities (LINQ), which has already proven to be quite useful. idFS is now also used to manage activity memberships by integrating its Identity Management Web services directly into the main application. This will hopefully give us some insights with respect to possible new idFS features.

New toys

Finally, after several delays and smashed hopes, our new laptops have arrived. Slightly bigger than my old one, but also much more powerful. The battery looks like a close assault weapon and will hopefully not cause too much trouble at the airport.

idFS on .NET 3.5

idFS is compatible with the .NET Framework 3.5. Although the latest version of the framework is additive, this was not self-evident, as some aspects of idFS depend on rather deep, technical layers. This week, I upgraded it using Visual Studio 2008. Meanwhile, we are now using idFS within the project phase of this semester’s practical course on Web Engineering.