Proposal for a Permanent Plugfest Environment

[Karsten Eberding <karsten@eberding.eu>]

Hello,

as discussed in the last CMIS TC Call, here is a proposal for a 
permanent online plugfest environment, to be accessed by participants of 
the CMIS TC and their partners, to test and validate interoperability 
between various systems.

Several concerns have been raised, that made previous attempts 
unsuccessful, including:
- The environment must be properly secured and protected, we cannot 
allow open access in the Internet (except maybe for Open Source systems)
- Every vendor wants to be in control of who receives access to what
- Management overhead must be minimal, vendors cannot allocate dedicated 
resources for this
- Cost must be minimal, most vendors have no additional budget available

If these concerns can be addressed, the online environment will also 
show valuable benefits, including:
- lower cost for travel and expenses, F2F meetings can take place less often
- faster turn-around for new releases, vendors don't need to wait for 
the next F2F meeting
- scalable for many more partners, as more vendors support CMIS and more 
solutions need to get tested


The proposal assumes that every vendor is responsible for his own 
software, e.g. installation and configuration as needed to work in a 
plugfest. Vendors who already have an online test / demo environment can 
continue to use it, vendors who want to build one can work with me to 
set this up on Amazon AWS. I will not host any vendor software, but 
provide the following components that make it easier to work together:


1) a centralized user access and management environment, based on an 
LDAP directory. This is probably the most important element, as it 
allows to control access to all installations. The LDAP directory 
implements jointly agreed policies, I would start with the following 
suggestion:
- every vendor assigns an administrator who is responsible to manage all 
users from his own company
- per default, every user has visibility and access to other users and 
systems from his own company only
- if two vendors agree to setup a partnership, visibility and access 
will be extended to each other. It can be terminated by each vendor if 
needed.

I have an LDAP implementation with these settings up and running. Most 
ECM systems are able to use LDAP for authorization and authentication. 
This eliminates adminsitrative tasks, while keeping control at each vendor.


2) a control environment to start and stop instances on Amazon as 
needed. This allows to start instances only when needed, significantly 
reducing cost for AWS. This feature is optional and only applies to 
vendors who decide to run their software on AWS.


3) a reverse proxy to further control and limit access to the ECM 
servers. It also solves the issue with changing IP addresses within AWS, 
it can map a fixed domain name to whatever IP gets used when starting up 
the instance. The use of the reverse proxy is optional as well.


4) an online discussion forum to find resolutions for any issues. This 
could be JIRA or something else, access should be restricted to the 
group to avoid general support questions from the public. Alternatively, 
the existing OASIS JIRA can be used.


This proposal is different to some previous discussions about a hosted 
demo environment, as it does not include a hosting offering from my 
side. The technology above is mostly available, and we could quickly 
start a prototype with interested partners.

I am sure that an easy way to test and validate solutions with a larger 
number of CMIS servers is an important element to increase the adoption 
of CMIS, especially for those vendors who are not (yet) part of the TC. 
That's why I am so interested to get this done.

I am very interested to hear whether this would be useful.

thanks

--
Karsten Eberding

St.-Martin-Str. 19
85604 Zorneding

Phone +49 171 3090201
Mailkarsten@eberding.eu