Grouper Product Roadmap
This roadmap sketches substantial and signal functional enhancements to Grouper, and to align at least some of them with future releases. It is (always!) a work in progress, subject to the considerations and requirements of participants in the Grouper Working Group. It is also a proposition: it represents the default plan that the Grouper core developers will attempt to implement.
Items that have fallen off of the roadmap appear further below with some explanation as to why.
Release | Tentative date or time frame |
1.6 | |
2.0 | |
2.1 | |
2.2 | |
2.3 | scheduled for April 2016 |
Release | Item | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 2.3 | TIER packaging | Discuss with TIER and decide on standard TIER packaging for quick start (VM vs Docker vs Installer). Link to TIER Packaging Working Group. |
| 2.3 | Revise build environment and dependency retrieval | Revising code environment to get rid of dependencies and the hybrid builds (Maven and ant builds, hard to keep everything in sync) Possible options:
Need to figure out versions for each dependency. |
| 2.3 (tentative) | upgrade vt-ldap | to ldaptive (PSPNG to use ldaptive) |
2.3 (done) | Change folder privileges so that instead of the STEM privilege, there is an ADMIN privilege on folders. The ADMIN privilege would mean you have all rights to the folder, you can rename it, delete it, change privileges, and effectively every other privilege. The CREATE privilege would be changed to also include creating folders (in addition to groups and attributes). And the STEM_ATTR_READ and STEM_ATTR_UPDATE would remain the same. Note, so the name doesnt conflict with the group ADMIN privilege, the stem privilege will be called STEM_ADMIN. | |
2.3 (in progress) | Improve loader |
|
| 2.3 (in progress) | Add more features to new UI | Add features into the new Grouper 2.2 UI so that more things from the admin UI and the lite UI can be performed in the new UI. |
2.3 (in progress) | Add remaining attribute/permission operations to WS | Add ability to manage attribute and permission definitions 100% via the WS. Currently many things can be done via the WS but not all. Currently the gaps can be addressed via the UI/API. |
2.3 | Standard authorization API | Define and implement a standard WS API. This is a CIFER/TIER effort and might be based on SCIM or OAuth2 and might be readonly for 2.3. This would be a web service and might also include messaging. |
2.3 (in progress) | Successor to the PSP first pass. Include AD and LDAP connectors | |
Not yet assigned | Improve gsh by adding readline like capabilities (line editing, tab completions, history, etc). Explore incorporating Jline2 into the current beanshell approach or possibly adopting groovysh as the base. | |
2.3 (in progress) | Provisioning by message | Use a message bus to notify interested parties, including traditional provisioning agents, of group changes. TBD: supported message transports, format of messages, content of messages. Possible transports include AWS, Azure, ActiveMQ. |
2.4 | Finish the new UI, replace admin and lite UI | Add features into the new Grouper 2.2 UI so that everything from the admin UI and the lite UI can be performed in the new UI. Remove the admin and lite UIs (redirect outdated links). Add user based auditing and overall auditing. Add new features like the ability to easily configure "rules" in the UI |
On-going | Grouper Core enhancement | Continue adding capabilities to meet requirements from the field. |
On-going | Community contributions | Solicit and publicize community contributions of extensions and complements to Grouper. |
Not yet assigned | Register for notifications | Add ability for users to register to be notified of changes to specified objects. Note, there are rules to email users about changes to memberships |
2.4 | More provisioning connectors | Add further connectors to reflect specified group, membership, role, and permission information into external systems and services. Include Google provisioning (from the Unicon contribution to the PSPNG) |
2.4 (tentative) | Scaling REST webservice | A page in the Administration guide, Grouper always available web services and client, demonstrates one way to provide always available services using a specialized client. The CIFER REST web service will need the server-side capability to provide that always-available functionality. In addition the REST API should be able to access multiple, read-only caches so it can efficiently handle any increase in query requests, most of which will not need to directly access the primary database. PSPNG should be able to provision to a database table, and WS should be able to read from that table (or tables) for simple operations. |
| Not assigned yet | Loader real time changes | Allow the loader to have event based processing e.g. in messaging or a change log table. LDAP might need messaging. SQL would need triggers and change log table |
Whatever happened to ... ?
A brief explanation of why some things seem to have disappeared from earlier versions of this roadmap.
What Happened? | Item | Description |
|---|---|---|
Completed in 2.2.1 | Improve the Grouper installer so that it can leverage config overlays to upgrade a grouper environment (or help give steps to upgrade grouper) | |
Completed in 2.2.1 | Active Directory has some constraints regarding the storing of group and membership objects of the same name. This item would create an optional API-level constraint which would prevent you from re-using a name across multiple objects (stem, group, attribute, etc). | |
Completed in 2.2 | Grouper has an administrative UI, the Membership Update Web UI, and as of v2.0, additional Web UIs for attribute, role, permission, and user invitation management. Further, several substantial UIs have been created by Grouper users, usually designed to meet needs in a specifically identified context. This roadmap item is aimed at addressing how Grouper should engage, support, or borrow from these efforts to provide UI capabilities that are closer to contextual needs more often than at present. | |
Completed in 2.2 | Add ability to tag objects in Grouper (via the new attribute framework) so that folders, groups, permissions can be grouped into a "service". The API/UI/WS could filter search results based on the service to make it easier for users to perform tasks in Grouper. See documentation page. | |
Completed in 2.2 | In order to make Grouper more easily deployable across environments, and more easily upgradable, add ability for cascaded config files, and expression language in config file entries. There can be a default configuration file, and an override file so that only the changes from the default can be tracked in the overlay. See Grouper configuration overlay. | |
Completed in 2.2 | Provide group, membership, and group management role information via SCIM, in partnership with SURFnet. | |
Completed in 2.2 | Treat privileges as Group lists | Remove the pluggability of Grouper privileges (Group READ/UPDATE etc), treat them as group lists to improve WS operations, simplify the UI, etc |
Completed in 2.2 | Built-in support for managing unix GIDs by assigning a numeric ID to each group and folder. | |
Completed in 2.2 | Migrate from legacy attributes to the new attribute framework in a transparent way. The old API and WS and UI should still work correctly. Plan to migrate lists and hooks as well. | |
Completed in 2.2 | COmanage integration | Work cooperatively with the COmanage project to integrate Grouper within COmanage. Integer group ID's, WS operation tweaks |
Completed in 2.2 | Subject security realms | Differently users might have different privacy requirements for the Subject API. Security by realm is implemented in the JDBC2 source adapter. Callers pass in which "realm" the search should take place in, and the source can adjust how the search takes place, what attributes look like, etc. |
Completed in 2.2 | Grouper user data | Store information about a user in grouper in a generic way. e.g. recently used objects. favorites, etc. |
Completed in 2.1 | In-built load-balancing to enable highly available read-only access to the Groups Registry via web services. | |
Completed in 1.6-2.1 | PSP, formerly Ldappc NG | Complete work on the new provisioning connector, built from the Shibboleth Attribute Resolver and SPML components. Integrate with Grouper notifications for asynchronous, incremental updating in addition to periodic batch style updating. Includes specific support for Active Directory. Package a Shibboleth DataConnector for Grouper. |
Completed in 2.1 | Dynamic group membership | Dynamically maintain groups and memberships based on LDAP-resident attributes. |
Completed in 2.0 | Point in Time Audit | Query the state of the groups registry at a prior point in time. |
Completed in 2.0 | Rules | Declarative triggers that perform changes to the Grouper Registry. |
Completed in 2.0 | Federated group membership and privileges | Built-in support for memberships and Grouper privileges to be assigned to federated identities. |
Completed in 2.0 | Federated group management | Enable groups from autonomous Grouper instances to be referenced by and incorporated into another Grouper instance. |
Completed in 2.0 | PDP | The Grouper permissions web service takes into account allow/disallow and limits to give the decision of access back to the requestor |
Completed in 2.0 | Lite UI enhancement | Support easier to use end-user UI components in addition to the existing administrative UI. Initial component, for managing membership of a single group, is in v1.5. |
Completed in 2.0 | Integrate with VOOT | Integrate Grouper with VOOT (group protocol for cloud webapps), experimental... |
Completed in 1.6-2.1+ | Notification of changes | In v1.6, build on the initial implementation of incremental group, membership, and folder (or namespace) change notifications in v1.5 to provide notification based on flattened group membership to more efficiently enable relying parties to maintain membership lists. Also in v1.6, partner with a deployment using an asynchronous messaging infrastructure (perhaps an ESB) to drive enhancement of the toolkit for that style of data integration. |
Completed in v1.6 | Attribute framework | Complement the existing ad hoc attribute on groups with the ability to define and associate attributes of various types to groups, memberships, and folders. Initial release was in v1.5, comprising marker attributes. Additional attribute types in v1.6. Expose attribute framework suitably through web services interfaces in v1.6. |
Completed in v1.6 | Kuali Identity Management integration | A connector that enables Kuali Rice to delegate group management to Grouper. |
Completed in v 1.6 | Subject Web Service | Expose Subject API methods suitably via Grouper Web Services so that clients don't have to build their own way to reference Subjects. |
Completed in v 1.6 | External workflow integration | Integrate Grouper with Kuali Enterprise Workflow (v1.6), and maybe other implementations. |
Completed in v1.5 | Namespace Transition Support | The hierarchy of folders (or naming stems) in a deployment will change over time. This supports the ability to logically move or copy a group, a selection of groups, or a folder from one folder to another. This complements the capability of the XML Import/Export tool for prune & graft operations for large scale changes. |
Completed in v1.5 | User Audit | Report on who took which administrative action when. |
Completed in v1.4 | Extension hooks | Implement infrastructure within the Grouper API to enable independent extension of key internal events. Pre- and post-processing hooks will be provided for each "primitive API operation". This would make certain other tasks more feasible, notably "Notification of changes" in this roadmap and incorporation of a site's business rules. |
Completed in v1.4 | Enhance Web Services | Solidify the experimental Web Services support released in 1.3.0 based on field experience. |
The issue has been resolved with improved Grouper configuration and the cessation of the Signet project. | Configuration and binding framework for I2MI | Identify and implement a framework in which combinations of I2MI components (currently Grouper API, Grouper UI, Grouper Web Services, Signet API, Signet UI, Ldappc, and Subject source adapters) can be easily integrated (not just in a single JVM). This is largely an issue of managing configuration and 3rd party libraries. The Spring application framework is an example of what might be used to address this need. |
This was overtaken by the "Enhance Web Services" item in the roadmap. | Web service interface facades | Determine which subsets of native API capabilities should be exposed through more focused end points to facilitate access by applications to Grouper- and Signet-provided access management capabilities. Also investigate how facades may be used to manage access to underlying group and privilege management and query capabilities. |
Not yet assigned | Further KIM-Grouper integration | Refine the Kuali KIM services interfaces and extend existing integration beyond group-level into roles & permissions. |
Not yet assigned | Further uPortal-Grouper integration | Complete Phase II deliverables. Time frame for Phase III deliverables still to be determined in concert with uPortal team. |
Not yet assigned | Security plugins | Spring security, Shiro, .NET plugins for Grouper WS that might be able to be distributed with the plugin itself. Initial proof-of-concept code available: https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Unicon+Grouper+Contributions. |