[Building Sakai] Site Management Patch

[Zhen Qian]

Adrian:

We were using site id approach in SAK-12868, but we think the site property
approach as you described here in SAK-16419 is better. So we are planning
to apply your patch in.

We may need to add some configurable options, like whether site id is
settable, etc. 

As for the copying tool content, the same strategy will be used as that in
duplicating site. We plan to add the checkbox for copying tool content.

Thanks,

- Zhen

On Thu, 28 May 2009 14:13:42 +0100, Adrian Fish <a.fish at lancaster.ac.uk>
wrote:
> Hi Zhen,
> 
> I read that you used an id approach to identifying templates and I 
> wondered whether that would imply the use of the sites tool to create 
> the template in the first place, as opposed to the easier to use 
> site-manage tool. It would be nice to also have a checkbox saying 'copy 
> contents' but again, this depends on the sites tools implementing the 
> Entity interfaces, doesn't it? In other words, under some templates will 
> have copyable content, some templates won't. We went for the lowest 
> common denominator of just copying the structure but then I added the 
> copy members bit in as well.
> 
> If a combined patch could allow you to copy structure and, optionally, 
> content and members whilst also allowing you to set the site id for the 
> nicer URLs, then great !
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Adrian.
> 
> Zhen Qian wrote:
>> Adrian and Steve:
>>
>> We didn't use the site property approach. We assume those sites with 
>> "site.template" in its id to be template sites. The performance 
>> problem was due to the process of getting all sites and filter out 
>> those with "site.template" inside site ids. I am not sure about the 
>> performance nowadays for searching site list based on a site property, 
>> though.
>>
>> Other difference between SAK-12868 and SAK-16419 are: In SAK-12868, 
>> template are grouped by site types. If user selects "use template", he 
>> can late change site information, but not the tool list. The site 
>> members are not copied, but the tool contents are. The target site id 
>> is not settable, either.
>>
>> I think setting template site during run time is a desired feature. It 
>> is also good to give user more options like whether copy 
>> members/contents over or not.  We will need to do performance testing 
>> first. We might also need to work on the UI a little bit - the site 
>> creation wizard already has a lot of steps!
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> - Zhen
>>
>>
>> On May 26, 2009, at 8:45 AM, Adrian Fish wrote:
>>
>>> I did have a look at that patch and was put off by the fact that the 
>>> template ids are read from sakai.properties - it will be a real pain 
>>> to have to schedule downtimes just to pick up a new template site id. 
>>> This way seems more  dynamic; tag a site as a 'template' and it's 
>>> picked up straight away. If there is a 2 minute delay due to db 
>>> lookups with 10K of sites then that is a bummer, admittedly.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Adrian.
>>>
>>> Steve Swinsburg wrote:
>>>> Hi John,
>>>> we needed a way to configure this at runtime from any site that we 
>>>> mark as a template and not necessarily copy content, just the tools, 
>>>> much the same way as the copySite webservice works.
>>>>
>>>> Having to have a certain siteid such as what SAK-12868 does is a 
>>>> little cumbersome, especially if the site is well established and 
>>>> you want to copy content as you can't change the siteId afterwards. 
>>>> Our patch allows any site to be marked as a template.
>>>>
>>>> It might be useful to join forces here, using our property method 
>>>> and the EntityTransferrer method to transfer content if desired.
>>>>
>>>> cheers,
>>>> Steve
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>> Steve Swinsburg
>>>> Portal Systems Developer
>>>> Centre for e-Science
>>>> Lancaster University
>>>> Lancaster
>>>> LA1 4YT
>>>>
>>>> email: s.swinsburg at lancaster.ac.uk
<mailto:s.swinsburg at lancaster.ac.uk>
>>>> phone: +44 (0) 1524 594870
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 26 May 2009, at 12:28, John Leasia wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi Adrian,
>>>>> also see SAK-12868 which added a template capability.
>>>>>
>>>>> John
>>>>>
>>>>> Adrian Fish wrote:
>>>>>> If anybody's interested I've added a feature request and patch for 
>>>>>> the site-manage tool to JIRA. It allows you to mark any site as a 
>>>>>> template and then create sites from those templates via the 
>>>>>> site-manage tool. It'll make my life as a Sakai admin easier, it 
>>>>>> might do the same for you ...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://jira.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-16419
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Adrian.
>>>>>>
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>>>
>>> -- 
>>> ==================================
>>> Adrian Fish
>>> Software Engineer
>>> Centre for e-Science
>>> Bowland Tower South C Floor
>>> Lancaster University
>>> Lancaster
>>> LA1 4YW
>>>
>>> email: a.fish at lancaster.ac.uk
>>> web:   http://agora.lancs.ac.uk
>>>
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> 
>