Posted by aaron1234nz on October 12, 2007 at 5:11am
The company I work for is seriously looking at the possibility of using Drupal as the CMS for our websites. We are also iMIS users.
Has anyone looked into the methods of integration? ASI provide iBO's which can be accessed via a COM interface. There are also a couple of companies that provide WebServices (XML based) that could be used. WebServices from Fisher Technology and iBridge from ISG solutions spring to mind.
I'd be interested in a module aimed at integrating with web services ... right now we have a series of LOW-FI rest services interacting directly with some of the tables in iMIS, but I'd love to pursue something a little more mainstream. We have an existing drupal deployment at http://connect.educause.edu and we're in the process of working up a migration from our homegrown CMS to drupal, so any work that we can tap into on this front could be very intriguing.
Posted by aaron1234nz on November 27, 2007 at 4:20am
Thanks for the link Matt. I like what you have done with drupal. We are also in the e-journal publishing business and are quite interested in what you have done with the library section of your website.
My current thinking is to write a set of iMIS 'helper' modules in Drupal that interact will form the bridge between Drupal modules (eg Event, e-commerce, Profiles, Organic Groups) and the iMIS back end. We are currently able to talk to the iMIS database via ASI's IBO's but we are holding off writing the IBO side of the modules until we upgrade to version 15 (we are still using version 10). What ever I write, it should be easy to hook any imis communication back end system up to them (IBO or web service).
The plan is to not touch existing drupal modules, but to carefully write hooks/SQL queries/cron jobs that will interact with the modules. This will provide a more seamless upgrade path as new versions of the modules come out.
I would expect we could get into serious development early next year.
Matt, do you or your team have any expertise in writing with the iBO's??
Sorry for the delayed response. We don't have any expertise with iBOs yet, but I suspect that a REST or Web Services layer atop iBOs lies in our future. We're using a series of REST based services throughout our current application, so once we get a web-based interface to iBOs up and running, we should be able to hit the ground running with some speed.
Have you made any progress on your project? I think we'll be looking into more advanced interation with iMIS in Q2.
We basically added an extra field to the base library record (for the full text of the article), added a view or two, and then applied an extra theme.
I'd be interested in any thoughts on how we might improve upon what we're currently doing and hearing more about the areas that you're investigating for your journals.
Posted by aaron1234nz on February 13, 2008 at 10:35am
Hey Matt,
I like the work you have done on your journal website. The parts I really like are the issues archive and the search filters. Do you use solr or something like that for your searches? What scale is your journal website? We have over 30k articles, and it's about to double in size.
One of our key requirements for our journal system is that online access to articles/journals can be purchased on an article-by-article basis or via subscription, which is different from the model you use on your website.
For our journal creation, we have had a very quick look at OJS which looks quite nice. From what I can tell, it has a similar architecture to drupal, with hooks etc. I also noted that the OJS website is done in drupal. I have also had a bit of a look at dPubS but after about 8 hrs of fiddling with the installation, I gave up. It's all perl/java/linux based so it takes a bit of work to follow.
Posted by surlyrobot on November 30, 2007 at 6:07pm
We use iMIS at the association where I work. Our main Web site runs on a Windows box. We have pages that are public, and pages that are only for members of the association. Some Windows code that I know nothing about handles that.
My department has a seperate site we use for special purposes. Right now, this seperate deparment site has a completely different user database, and obviously you have to log in seperately. I would love it if my deparment Web site would know when a visitor is currently logged in on the main site as a member of the association. For instance, if they were logged in that way Drupal would know to treat them as authenticated users.
We use iMIS 15 (got those early adopter blues). When you write the IBO side of the modules for version 15, would they enable me to do what I've just described?
Posted by aaron1234nz on December 7, 2007 at 1:47am
Hi surlyrobot,
If both of your websites (Main Website and your departments website) run Drupal then you could investigate using modules like SSO or FireceSSO to use common authentication between the sites.
as far as authentication, I am wanting to hook up one iMIS database per install of drupal. You could hook more than one drupal site up per iMIS database in theory.
I hope this answers your question
In reply to your PM to me:
As far as I know, other than this project, there are not any others working on iMIS/Drupal intergration.
The organisation I work for is in a similar situation to you. We are in need of a CMS that is iMIS aware. We also needed a fully featured CMS (that why we chose Drupal). I plan to allow Drupal work with iMIS in the following ways: Authentication, customer information editing, events, committees, and transactions (orders, subscriptions etc), and to allow access control/content promotion based on customer attributes.
I would not expect to have an alpha version ready for a month or two as I have several other projects I am working on simultaneously. If anyone can spare some development time for this project, that would be much appreciated.
Comments
Method of intergration
The company I work for is seriously looking at the possibility of using Drupal as the CMS for our websites. We are also iMIS users.
Has anyone looked into the methods of integration? ASI provide iBO's which can be accessed via a COM interface. There are also a couple of companies that provide WebServices (XML based) that could be used. WebServices from Fisher Technology and iBridge from ISG solutions spring to mind.
Web services ...
I'd be interested in a module aimed at integrating with web services ... right now we have a series of LOW-FI rest services interacting directly with some of the tables in iMIS, but I'd love to pursue something a little more mainstream. We have an existing drupal deployment at http://connect.educause.edu and we're in the process of working up a migration from our homegrown CMS to drupal, so any work that we can tap into on this front could be very intriguing.
Thanks for the link Matt. I
Thanks for the link Matt. I like what you have done with drupal. We are also in the e-journal publishing business and are quite interested in what you have done with the library section of your website.
My current thinking is to write a set of iMIS 'helper' modules in Drupal that interact will form the bridge between Drupal modules (eg Event, e-commerce, Profiles, Organic Groups) and the iMIS back end. We are currently able to talk to the iMIS database via ASI's IBO's but we are holding off writing the IBO side of the modules until we upgrade to version 15 (we are still using version 10). What ever I write, it should be easy to hook any imis communication back end system up to them (IBO or web service).
The plan is to not touch existing drupal modules, but to carefully write hooks/SQL queries/cron jobs that will interact with the modules. This will provide a more seamless upgrade path as new versions of the modules come out.
I would expect we could get into serious development early next year.
Matt, do you or your team have any expertise in writing with the iBO's??
IBOs
Sorry for the delayed response. We don't have any expertise with iBOs yet, but I suspect that a REST or Web Services layer atop iBOs lies in our future. We're using a series of REST based services throughout our current application, so once we get a web-based interface to iBOs up and running, we should be able to hit the ground running with some speed.
Have you made any progress on your project? I think we'll be looking into more advanced interation with iMIS in Q2.
Journals/Library Enhancements ...
We've recently made a few enhancements to our journal/periodical sections ...
http://connect.educause.edu/er
http://connect.educause.edu/eq
We basically added an extra field to the base library record (for the full text of the article), added a view or two, and then applied an extra theme.
I'd be interested in any thoughts on how we might improve upon what we're currently doing and hearing more about the areas that you're investigating for your journals.
Nice work
Hey Matt,
I like the work you have done on your journal website. The parts I really like are the issues archive and the search filters. Do you use solr or something like that for your searches? What scale is your journal website? We have over 30k articles, and it's about to double in size.
One of our key requirements for our journal system is that online access to articles/journals can be purchased on an article-by-article basis or via subscription, which is different from the model you use on your website.
For our journal creation, we have had a very quick look at OJS which looks quite nice. From what I can tell, it has a similar architecture to drupal, with hooks etc. I also noted that the OJS website is done in drupal. I have also had a bit of a look at dPubS but after about 8 hrs of fiddling with the installation, I gave up. It's all perl/java/linux based so it takes a bit of work to follow.
could this work?
We use iMIS at the association where I work. Our main Web site runs on a Windows box. We have pages that are public, and pages that are only for members of the association. Some Windows code that I know nothing about handles that.
My department has a seperate site we use for special purposes. Right now, this seperate deparment site has a completely different user database, and obviously you have to log in seperately. I would love it if my deparment Web site would know when a visitor is currently logged in on the main site as a member of the association. For instance, if they were logged in that way Drupal would know to treat them as authenticated users.
We use iMIS 15 (got those early adopter blues). When you write the IBO side of the modules for version 15, would they enable me to do what I've just described?
Single signons between drupal
Hi surlyrobot,
If both of your websites (Main Website and your departments website) run Drupal then you could investigate using modules like SSO or FireceSSO to use common authentication between the sites.
as far as authentication, I am wanting to hook up one iMIS database per install of drupal. You could hook more than one drupal site up per iMIS database in theory.
I hope this answers your question
In reply to your PM to me:
As far as I know, other than this project, there are not any others working on iMIS/Drupal intergration.
The organisation I work for is in a similar situation to you. We are in need of a CMS that is iMIS aware. We also needed a fully featured CMS (that why we chose Drupal). I plan to allow Drupal work with iMIS in the following ways: Authentication, customer information editing, events, committees, and transactions (orders, subscriptions etc), and to allow access control/content promotion based on customer attributes.
I would not expect to have an alpha version ready for a month or two as I have several other projects I am working on simultaneously. If anyone can spare some development time for this project, that would be much appreciated.
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-deleted- wrong place.