CERN-Solid server hosting

Project name

The CERN-Solid collaboration continuity with an in-house Community Solid Server (CSS)

Project description

In the CERN IT/CDA group a lot of work was done in 2020-2021 to understand the Solid project ecosystem. Solid is here to stay and develop tools that give the users sovereignty over their own data, the storage of and access control to those data. This is why we need to continue this work and extend the Proof of Concept (PoC) to other CERN Open Source applications, involving Authorisation/Authentication and user profiles. Most importantly, we need to bring up our own Solid server to host our pods, to be sure that all Data Protection issues are addressed and we have full control over the storage of our data on the pods. See HERE a policy document that explains this need.

For the CERN-Solid collaboration future:

Based on the positive conclusions of the successful PoC (presentation, video, transcript, thesis HERE) and the Policy document, the student will:

  1. Cover the research needs of the MSc thesis by evaluating the code and functionality of the Community Solid Server (CSS), based on a local installation and discussions in the relevant gitter forum.
  2. Install and configure a CERN CSS instance.
  3. Integrate it with the CERN new Single Sign-On (SSO).
  4. Contribute to CSS with a generic API for the ID provider, based on the interface experience with the CERN SSO integration. This cannot be done due to lack of time. Decision 2021/10/28 in meeting with university supervisor.
  5. Study performance and scaling issues, possibly via user interviews. CERN guest accounts (available from the CERN SSO) may be used to increase the community that creates Solid pods on the CERN CSS. This will be decided at the 2021/11/11 meeting with university supervisor. The reasons WHY tests with users may be not yet realistic should also be in the thesis.
  6. Comment in the thesis on the necessary documentation and/or videos to promote Solid pod adoption by the CERN community. Formulate an inspiring comment about the required quality of CSS in order to be endorsed by the community. Stay professional and scientific and form a FOUNDED conclusion.

Output:

Comments by the student Theo Meyer on the original description:

  1. Cover the research needs of the MSc thesis by evaluating the code and functionality of the Community Solid Server (CSS), based on a local installation and discussions in the relevant gitter forum.
  2. => Done, inspired from ISO 25010 quality software standard. Also, a review of open source community dynamics have been performed
  3. Install and configure a CERN CSS instance.
  4. => Done,  documented and reproducible
  5. Integrate it with the CERN new Single Sign-On (SSO).
  6. => Not successful, but documented. A packet analyzer setup has been built in order to help the integration of SSO and CSS. It has been built to study Digita's middleware but could be useful for other solution.
  7. Contribute to CSS with a generic API for the ID provider, based on the interface experience with the CERN SSO integration. This cannot be done due to lack of time. Decision 2021/10/28 in meeting with university supervisor.
  8. => abandoned
  9. Study performance and scaling issues, possibly via user interviews. CERN guest accounts (available from the CERN SSO) may be used to increase the community that creates Solid pods on the CERN CSS. This will be decided at the 2021/11/11 meeting with university supervisor. The reasons WHY tests with users may be not yet realistic should also be in the thesis.
  10. => Cern's users have tested the CSS instance after Terra Incognita's talk that raised relevant issues. Performance tests have been done too. Further user tests might not be relevant as CSS doesn't come with a UI, and users would be mostly capable of judging what they see and what they interact with. However, UI candidates for CSS have been documented, tested, and compared.
  11. Comment in the thesis on the necessary documentation and/or videos to promote Solid pod adoption by the CERN community. Formulate an inspiring comment about the required quality of CSS in order to be endorsed by the community. Stay professional and scientific and form a FOUNDED conclusion.
  12. => Strong arguments in favor of CSS have been found during this investigation as well as CSS limitation, some of them were evoked during terra incognita presentation
     

Produced material listed by supervisor Maria Dimou

Required skills

React, python, javascript programming. Experience with github, gitlab, opencast and OpenShift. Collaboration skills in large international communities. Good presentation and communication skills.

Learning experience

Solid is the future of the Web. In this development there will be opportunities for technical exchages with the inventor of the Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Solid collaborators, who are very enthusiastic.
The CERN community is complex and very interesting to work with. This project can be an asset for a young developer.

Project duration

3.5 months

Project area

Data Management Data Analytics Learning

Contact for further details

Maria Dimou

References

  1. Solid
    1. All notes can be reached via http://solid.cern.ch - please consult the material attached to each event.
    2. Announcements are made in https://gitter.im/cern-solid/community
    3. Penny UI ( https://penny.vincenttunru.com ) by Vincent Tunru.
    4. Maria's pod https://dimou.solidcommunity.net/ also viewed via Penny https://penny.vincenttunru.com/explore/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdimou.solidcommunity.net%2F
  2. CSS discussion forum https://gitter.im/solid/community-server
  3. CERN SSO
    1. Documentation https://auth.docs.cern.ch/
    2. https://gitlab.cern.ch/authzsvc/docs/keycloak-sso-examples
    3. https://auth.docs.cern.ch/applications/application-configuration/
    4. A recent BSc thesis including SSO integration of a web application https://cds.cern.ch/record/2724152/files/CERN-THESIS-2020-068.pdf

Status

Accomplished Submitted by Maria Dimou on Monday, September 20, 2021 - 13:35.
Student info
Student name

Théo Martin Meyer

University

IT university of Copenhagen - https://itu.dk - MSc supervisor Sebastian Buettrich

CERN supervisor

Maria Dimou

Thesis
Thesis type
Master
Project started 20 Sep 2021
Project finished 01 Jun 2021
Defence date
2022-08-16
Defence status
success
Monday, September 20, 2021 - 13:35