IT Development Poland

Details on IT development in Poland (not part of EMREX field trial)

1. Retrieving the list of our NCPs

In Poland, every HEI has a separate authentication system. Having multiple NCPs seems to be the most appropriate option.

• Option 1: We can provide a HTTPS URL with the dynamic list of all our NCPs. EMREG would fetch such list daily or hourly.
• Option 2: Alternatively, we could set up a cronjob and push the list to EMREG every time it changes, but this would probably require additional singing of such requests (e.g. with HMAC), hence, option 1 sounds easier.
• Option 3: Manually update the EMREG team via email messages, but we hope to avoid this.
• Option 4: We could set up an additional "man in the middle" NCP which would present the viewer with the list of "real" NCPs and provide redirection. This however: 1. seems ugly from UX perspective (more sites to visit, more data to (re)send), 2. as far as I understand, that's exactly why EMREG has the singleFetch attribute (to avoid such "man in the middle" NCPs), 3. Might be tricky to convince our client HEIs that our "man in the middle" doesn't eavesdrop.

The format of this dynamically generated list is yet to be agreed upon, but the easiest option would be to follow the JSON format of the emreg/list service.

2. Implementation of NCP

2.1. NCP DEMO server

2.1.1. Preparation

First, please authenticate yourself as a tester of our demo sites:

• https://cas.demo.usos.edu.pl/cas/login
• Username: emrex (contact usos@usos.edu.pl for password).
  
  

2.1.2. NCP workflow

1. (Optional) sign out of previously started student session (if any):
   • https://cas-test.demo.usos.edu.pl/cas-test/logout
2. Make your NCP request.
   • The URL of demo NCP: https://usosapps.demo.usos.edu.pl/services/emrex/ncp_endpoint
   You should see the welcome page, asking the student to sign in (or - if you're already signed in - then you'll be moved directly to step 4):
   
3. Choose a student to sign in as. We have prepared a couple of usernames for you:
   • login1633846 - typical "foreign student" use case with 5-10 courses to export.
   • login1559522 - typical "foreign student" use case with 5-10 courses to export + one course which we are not sure if it should be exportable (since it was imported from some other HEI, which might lead to a circular dependency of sorts).
   • login1794222 - different use case: a regular student with lots of courses.
   
   
4. You should see the "export your grades" page with the "Send" button at the bottom of the page. Clicking the button should take you directly to your returnUrl (with ELMO attached).
   
   
   

2.2. Known issues

• No PDF yet. It turned out that our IRO is not happy with the existing implementation of the PDF Transcript of Records for mobile students, so we will need to rewrite it. We can provide a fake PDF placeholder in our ELMO files if needed.

3. Implementation of SMP

We do not plan to use the SMP component (to avoid the need of serving a separate Java application for our EMREX Client).

4. Implementation of the EMREX Client

Will start only after the NCP is finished.

5. Online tools

https://public.usos.edu.pl/emrexdump/

6. Recent activities

• 2015-12-17: Started working on a public Schema Validator (EMREX Debugger).
• 2015-12-15: Our demo NCP is now online (described below, no PDF yet). I had some time to test NCP implementations in different countries (posted results on emrex-internal mailing list).
• 2015-12-07: Our NCP is now compatible with 1.0.0 schema, and it is basically ready to be tested. Unfortunately, it turned out that we'll need to wait for an appropriate test-server in order to make it available externally (ourside of our VPN). It might take some time.
• 2015-12-02: Resumed work on Polish NCP based on the new schema.
• 2015-11-24: Version 1.0.0 of the schema was released. Waiting for some final comments and vetoes.
• 2015-11-18: First comments have appeared (as of today, by Miika only). Started work on the next revision of the proposal (while still waiting for more comments).
• 2015-11-10: Published a proposal of a new well-documented XSD. Ceased further work while waiting for comments.
• 2015-11-07: Returned from Norway and resumed work. Cloned the EMREX schemas respository and started updating and annotating it, according to what I've recently learned.
• 2015-11-05: I have visited Norway and learnt a lot about the actual state of affairs.
• 2015-10-12: NCP implementation mostly complete, but I'm having serious trouble with ELMO docs and examples.
• 2015-10-01: I have joined the project, started reading EMREX docs and implementing NCP.