[Building Sakai] [sakai2-tcc] Knowledge Base tool replacement for Online Help?

Tue Mar 19 06:58:06 PDT 2013

On 15/03/2013 13:12, Roland Groen wrote:
> *
>
> Hi All,
>
>
> Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. Let me go through them
> by topic.
>
>
> Sakai > 2.7: I know that Jean Francois Leveque did some work migrating
> the tool to 2.9, I'm still awaiting feedback, but I'm quite sure he got
> it running on 2.9. The only thing that could be revisited is the way the
> tool installs itself over the existing help system. Maybe that can be
> done more elegant in Sakai > 2.7.

I've done a few changes to make it build and not fail at Sakai startup. 
The functional team hasn't done testing yet, AFAIK.

I could provide the changes with no further support.

> Import / export: The KB tool lacks the ability to import the existing
> help content because the University of Amsterdam wasn't much interested
> in using the this content. Instead they started off with the content
> from CSU. Unfortunately for the international Sakai community they
> translated it to Dutch. From the content perspective, the import does
> does not have to be complicated. The KB tool was inspired by the 3akai
> development, and has a REST interface. The specific metadata needs to be
> added manually.
>
>
> Searching, SOLR and ES. The original design of the KB is based on tables
> in the Sakai database and an embedded SOLR engine. The motivation for
> using database tables is purely because SOLR is not a database. We did
> not want to complicate the Sakai infrastructure and therefore used an
> embedded SOLR instance. I’m quite excited about Sakai getting a search
> based on SOLR/ES. My personal preference would be ES because it supports
> multi tenancy and doesn’t require the schema to be predefined. We’ve got
> experience with solr, rebuilding the index when the schema changes is
> challenging. ES being multi tenant would be great for supporting the KB
> tool, because a new index for the KB tool can be created on the fly.
> With SOLR one would have to drop in a new core to get a own index. For
> the record, I do think a central Sakai KB service would be the best
> solution.*
>
> Met vriendelijke groeten / With kind regards,
>
> --
> *Roland M.S. Groen*
> roland at edia.nl <mailto:roland at edia.nl>
>
> *Edia*  - Educatie Technologie
> Egelantiersstraat 141-143 | 1015 RA Amsterdam
> *T*  020 716 36 12 | *F*  020 716 36 13 | *M*  06 2423 09 06 |
> www.edia.nl <http://www.edia.nl/>
>
>
> 2013/3/12 John Bush <john.bush at rsmart.com <mailto:john.bush at rsmart.com>>
>
>     I assume we are talking about what's in:
>     https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/edia/knowledgebase/trunk/ ?
>
>     I don't think converting the search stuff would be very hard.  Its a
>     bit of a leaky abstraction as they are returning solr QueryResponse
>     objects.  But other than that, its just index and search stuff.  You
>     would just create a new ES index for help, and it would be pretty
>     straightforward.  Probably few days of dev I'd say (for me anyway).
>
>     On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Matthew Jones <matthew at longsight.com
>     <mailto:matthew at longsight.com>> wrote:
>      > Short of retyping everything, I don't think there was any path
>     that didn't
>      > require a code conversion. The current KB code isn't compatible with
>      > anything > 2.7.1 either, so it doesn't compile OOTB without some
>      > modifications
>      >
>      > The current help system uses XML definition files and separate
>     i18n html
>      > files. So you'd have to write something that would go through all
>     these xml
>      > files and either dump it into the database or use the api to add
>     new items.
>      >
>      > Some other limitations
>      > - There's no way to import/export other that a database dump
>     (which kind of
>      > ties into this issue above) It seems like you'd really want to be
>     able to
>      > import help for a new tool, especially stuff like contrib tools,
>     ideally
>      > automatically. I'm guessing it would work with the current xml
>     and html
>      > files and autodiscover/import them if they're new (not previously
>     added
>      > modified, like if you just added evaluation or something)
>      > - There's no support for i18n, that's on the future directions.
>     It seems
>      > like you'd need a separate column to indicate the language and
>     some more
>      > work to display only files in a particular language
>      > - It looks like it uses SOLR (one per instance). The current path
>     in Sakai
>      > seems to use Elastic Search with possible optional setup for
>     SOLR, so this
>      > search would probably need to be rewritten
>      >
>      > I don't know the effort required to get any of that
>     fixed/implemented. Maybe
>      > a week for the import/export/current help compatibility? A few
>     days for
>      > i18n? Not sure on search.
>      >
>      > This solution would also have the problem of the help files
>     getting out of
>      > date between releases, even if we kept a central source
>     up-to-date. People
>      > would either have to wipe their changes from the db and re-apply
>     their
>      > customizations or update based on some diff we put out. This is a
>     problem
>      > with the current system too though.
>      >
>      > The other alternative to this would be centrally hosted help,
>     like one that
>      > Sam wrote in Drupal. I think he had some mechanism for importing
>     already,
>      > not sure about export. I don't think it has any support for i18n
>     other than
>      > running multiple sites and it does do searching.
>      >
>      > I'm not sure what would be better/faster for the community. I'm
>     sure some
>      > people would want to take what's there and have a way to
>     customize it in
>      > either case which could be an advantage for a built in tool like
>     this if
>      > these issues were addressed.
>      >
>      >
>      >
>      > On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 3:35 PM, Steve Swinsburg
>     <steve.swinsburg at gmail.com <mailto:steve.swinsburg at gmail.com>>
>      > wrote:
>      >>
>      >> This looks really good. Any idea of the level of effort required
>     to get
>      >> existing help into this system?
>      >>
>      >> cheers,
>      >> Steve
>      >>
>      >>
>      >> On 08/03/2013, at 3:36 AM, Neal Caidin
>     <nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org <mailto:nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org>>
>      >> wrote:
>      >>
>      >> Hi All,
>      >>
>      >> Edia has created a nice summary of their Knowledge Base tool at
>      >>
>     https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/HELP/Future+plans+for+The+Knowledge+Base+Tool
>      >>
>      >> This tool has potential for replacing the existing Sakai context
>     sensitive
>      >> Help system. The current online help system is not currently on a
>      >> sustainable path and we need to figure out how to either update
>     it or find a
>      >> replacement.
>      >>
>      >> Take a look and see what you think.
>      >>
>      >> Thanks,
>      >>
>      >> Neal Caidin
>      >>
>      >> Sakai CLE Community Coordinator
>      >> nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org
>     <mailto:nealcaidin at sakaifoundation.org>
>      >> Skype: nealkdin
>      >> AIM: ncaidin at aol.com <mailto:ncaidin at aol.com>