[Building Sakai] Investigating site exports from Sakai 2

Thu Oct 8 16:38:34 PDT 2009

Archiving sites FULLY is a big issue here in Australia, if not  
everywhere. When people find out that you can't backup a site, or have  
a process that backs up each site nightly, then have that backup  
available for a full site restore should someone do something bad in a  
site, they are astounded.

Yes, you can rollback the 'entire' system to some point in time (which  
affects every other site), or even recover a deleted site (if you know  
the siteid) but we need a way to properly backup a site, and all of  
its contents, student work included so it can be restored on the same  
server, or a different one possibly.

Archive/backup of sites needs to be able to grab everything. It should  
also be able to be triggered by the maintain type user so they can  
backup the site personally, as you suggest below Lance, but also be  
triggered by some process, say a Quartz job that can run nightly and  
backup individual sites, taking a complete snapshot of that point in  
time.

cheer,s
Steve

On 09/10/2009, at 4:38 AM, Speelmon, Lance Day wrote:

> Adam,
>
> You are right in thinking that the capabilities under discussion  
> would allow an end user to download a zip file containing the  
> structure of a site.  Here is what I think needs to be done:
>
> 1) Enable ArchiveService.archive(String siteId) for those services  
> that do not currently implement it; see http://confluence.sakaiproject.org//x/jgL5Aw 
>  for details.
> 2) Add some UI element to the Site Info tool which would invoke the  
> archive() method, and...
> 3) Zip up the folder that is produced from archive(),
> 4) Download the zip file to the user, and
> 5) Clean up the temporary folder used for archive/zip.
>
>
> Lance Speelmon
> Scholarly Technologist
>
> On Oct 8, 2009, at 12:29 PM, Adam Marshall wrote:
>
>> sorry for coming in late on this one but is there a proposal to let  
>> the users save the XML on their desktop? This is something we'd  
>> like to do now.
>>
>> adam
>>
>>
>>
>> From: sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [mailto:sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org 
>> ] On Behalf Of Speelmon, Lance Day
>> Sent: 08 October 2009 15:32
>> To: sakai-dev List
>> Subject: Re: [Building Sakai] Investigating site exports from Sakai 2
>>
>> FYI - If you are interested to see what Sakai 2.6.0 produces when  
>> archive() is run on a site, I have updated this page with a sample  
>> zip file and individual XML samples:  http://confluence.sakaiproject.org//x/jgL5Aw
>>
>>
>> Lance Speelmon
>> Scholarly Technologist
>>
>> On Oct 7, 2009, at 3:53 PM, Speelmon, Lance Day wrote:
>>
>>
>> Okay - after some further investigation, it appears as though  
>> archive() does not export student content in most cases (the  
>> exception being Assignments (so far)). This is good news and means  
>> that we will be able to use archive() as-is; likely with some  
>> improvements after further testing.  L
>>
>>
>> Lance Speelmon
>> Scholarly Technologist
>>
>> On Sep 29, 2009, at 8:05 PM, Speelmon, Lance Day wrote:
>>
>>
>> Okay - after some more investigation, I have reached the following  
>> conclusions.  I have yet to hear about anyone depending on  
>> ArchiveService.archive().  If I continue to hear nothing, I will  
>> have to assume no one is using it.
>>
>> Based on sakai-2.6.0 artifacts, I believe the following to be  
>> accurate. This tells us that services that claim to support  
>> ArchiveService.archive() should export to XML(/ZIP?) but need to be  
>> tested. Those services which do support transferCopyEntities() but  
>> do not support archive() are the obvious gaps that need to be  
>> filled; e.g.: GlossaryEntityProducer, GradebookEntityProducer,  
>> MatrixContentEntityProducer, MetaobjEntityProducer,  
>> PresentationContentEntityProducer, SAMigo- 
>> >AssessmentEntityProducer, and WizardEntityProducer. With those  
>> gaps filled, we would at least reach parity with the tools that  
>> currently support copying site structure from one site to another.  
>> This summary only includes tools and services which ship with Sakai  
>> 2.6.0 and do not account for contrib or other third party tools.
>>
>> See: http://confluence.sakaiproject.org//x/jgL5Aw
>>
>> Remaining questions:
>> 1.       Does anyone actually depend on ArchiveService.archive()?  
>> My instincts tell me no since most of the tools do not implement  
>> it. Am I wrong?
>> 2.      Could we usurp the ArchiveService.archive() interface and  
>> change the behavior so that only site structure is exported without  
>> student content?
>> 3.      Do we leave ArchiveService.archive() alone and create a new  
>> API? Probably harder to get into a soon to be released Sakai (e.g.  
>> Sakai 2.7.0).
>>
>> Lance Speelmon
>> Scholarly Technologist
>>
>> On Sep 22, 2009, at 10:26 PM, Speelmon, Lance Day wrote:
>>
>>
>> I would greatly appreciate your input regarding exporting Sakai 2  
>> sites to XML.  See:
>>
>> http://lancespeelmon.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/investigating-site-exports-from-sakai-2/
>>
>> Key questions:
>>
>> 1.       Does anyone actually depend on ArchiveService.archive()?  
>> My instincts tell me no since most of the tools do not implement  
>> it. Am I wrong?
>> 2.      Could we usurp the ArchiveService.archive() interface and  
>> change the behavior so that only site structure is exported without  
>> student content?
>> 3.      Do we leave ArchiveService.archive() alone and create a new  
>> API?
>> 4.      How many tools still need to implement archive()?
>>
>> Thanks, L
>>
>>
>> Lance Speelmon
>> Scholarly Technologist
>>
>> On Aug 17, 2009, at 4:53 PM, Speelmon, Lance Day wrote:
>>
>>
>> As we prepare to start working on a Sakai 2 -> Sakai 3 migration  
>> effort, I would like to help organize community contributions.   
>> There are a number of roles and skills that need to be filled and  
>> your participation would be highly valued.
>>
>> What can be done immediately:
>>
>> 1) Collaborate on defining the migration project plan.
>> 2) Investigate LTI as an underlying mechanism for exposing Sakai 2  
>> tools within the Saki 3 portal.
>> 3) Investigate Moodle's export/import architecture and file formats.
>> 4) Develop a Sakai 2 Resources (i.e. ContentHosting) to Sakai 3 JCR  
>> data conversion.
>>
>> If any of these tasks sound interesting or you have other ideas you  
>> would like to share, please use the wiki space below.  Please take  
>> the time to declare your area of interest on the Contributors page.
>>
>> http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/KERNDOC/Migration
>>
>> Thanks!  L
>>
>>
>> Lance Speelmon
>> Scholarly Technologist
>>
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