^open sTeam

We received a nice E-Mail from the guys of Bejing open party telling us that they are providing a chinese manual for the webinterface development.

View the manual

Support for versioning were added to the PHP API, the release also includes some important fixes. Visit the PHPsTeam download page for more details

The new webinterface version comes with the following improvements:

• don't let the browser cache error pages
  

To the Webinterface Download Page

The new webinterface version comes with the following improvements:

• increased robustness of the installation process

Fixes made in step web-2_2_12 which are included in web-2_2_14:

• backported fix displaying errors in details view of pike scripts from web-2_3
• bugfix: always using USER_SELECTION in uppercase to increase robustness (probably fixed bug which may cause data loss)

To the Webinterface Download Page

The steam Java developer forum took place on the 19th of November at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute in Paderborn. The main issues discussed in this year's meeting were:

• built modules from the differend communication layers to be able to exchange and enhance the communication layers (P2P, coal, offline...)
  
• enhancement of the offline persistence
• better handling of lokal files by the offline persitence of the javasteam API
  
• implement a config mechanism for the javasteam API in general to be able to configure things instead of making lokal changes of the API (maybe for switching the communication layer)
  
• use standard-mechanismus (z.B. log4j) for the log output of the javasteam API
  
• rework SSL and certificates for the secure coal connection müsste noch überarbeitet werden
  
• rework the event system of the java api for steam events
  
• implementation of a plugin-/module-mechanism for modular enhancements like communication or offline caching might be integrated as plugins/modules
  
• integration of support for the package:whiteboardsuppord- spm which offers methods for performance optimization for common requests
  
• implement/rework cache mechanism right into the javasteam API. The existing mechanism is disabled at the moment.
  

View some pictures of the activities.

The new webinterface version comes with the following improvements:

• backported fix displaying errors in details view of pike scripts from web-2_3
• bugfix: always using USER_SELECTION in uppercase to increase robustness (probably fixed bug which may cause data loss)

To the Webinterface Download Page

The next developer day will take place on monday, november 19th at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute in paderborn.
All developers are invited to join us from 10 to 18 o'clock for a free discussion of the sTeam java api features, future development issues of the sTeam java api and more.
For more information about our java api see: the javasteam website

On september 21st, open-sTeam was presented on the "Technology for Business" fair at Bielefeld.
Prof. Dr. Thorsten Hampel and Prof. Dr. Reinhard Keil got in touch with local Business Partners located around Bielefeld and Paderborn.
This event was mentioned in the HNI News

The open-sTeam team is proud to announce that the joint effort of streamlining the technological and organizational infrastructure at the University of Paderborn has been nominated as a finalist for the MEDIDA-PRIX 2007 award. The open-sTeam server provides the basis for cooperative knowledge spaces which serve as the primary means to support different kinds of knowledge work, such as learning, teaching and administration.

The winner of the medidaprix award will be announced at the GMW conference in Hamburg on September, 13th. More information is available on the computers and society working group homepage.

As you might have noticed, we had some trouble with our cvs server cvs.open-steam.org (and its alias shovel.uni-paderborn.de) today. The machine that hosted our cvs had a hard-disk failure, so we needed to move to a new machine and restore a backup of the cvs data.

The backup was from tonight: 14th of June, 2007 at around 3 AM (central european time: GMT+1), so if you checked in any code between 3 AM and 3 PM (the server was down from 3 PM till 8 PM), the checkin has unfortunately been lost. You should update your local code and re-commit any changes that were lost. We would also advise you to make a backup copy of your local code before trying to synchronize with the cvs repository, just to make sure you don't loose any code by accident.

We regret the cvs downtime and hope that it hasn't caused you any inconvenience,
your open-sTeam team

These days we received good news from iaeste austria reporting their experience with the new server version 'steam-2_4':

The open-sTeam server software 2.4 series has been released today. The first official version is 2.4.23 since we took some time to perform thorough tests before the release.

More details on the new release, as well as downloads can be found on the server site.

An uni paderborn style is now available for the PHP mini web CMS based on open sTeam: View available stylesheets
The paderborn university layout is available as a stylesheet set for the Rapidweaver Website Creation Tool too (for Mac): (download uni pb rapidweaver theme)

In the context of Quality Assurance we have added Selenium Webtests (look at OpenQA Website) for version 2.2 of the openSteam Web Interface, that has just been released. You can test the correct functionality of a new Webinterface installation with these.

The webtests and information on how to use them is avialable via CVS as part of the web-2_2 module and under the Webinterface/Webtests section of this site.

A new stable version of the webinterface (web-2_2_4) has been released. The main focus of this version was to fix some bugs.

For more Information visit the webinterface download page

The process to ease the development of PHP applications adressing the virtual knowledge spaces of the steam server is going on.
On december 6th the PHPsTeam developers brought together their knowledge and increased the stability, performance and convenience in using PHP to adress the sTeam Server. This results in the new milestone release of version 2.4 of the PHPsTeam API.
The applications "steamweb", "koala" and "bidowl" (german) have been sucessfully adjusted to use the new PHPsTeam release and benefit from the recent optimizations.

The "javasteam developer forum" took place on the 27th of November at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute in Paderborn. The main issues adressed in this year's meeting were:

• Removing the SteamConnector singleton
• Fixing some event-related problems
• Using SSL connections in most applications
• Providing some more JUnit tests
• consolidating up- and download methods

Have a look at all issues (Some of them were directly solved)

View some pictures of the activities.

This year's chistmas party of the open sTeam team and associates takes place on monday, december 11th, 6 p.m. at the "Fetenkeller" of the villa at the university campus. Feel free to join us, drinks and food will be provided. (travel plan)
As "the same procedure as every year", the traditional "Schrottwichteln" will be moderated by Dominik Niehus this year. So dont forget a little scrap-gift... (no computer related stuff, 5 € max.)

open sTeam was presented on the education quality forum in Bonn from 8th to 9th november. The stand was a joint of the locomotion and mistel project presenting their last efforts in developing an open sTeam based platform for teachers and learners integrating courses and lectures with open groups, allowing the students to act freely. Providing some web 2.0 technics a la podcasts, rss feeds and some more the platform gains acceptance rapidly at the moment.

There are some pictures from our stand online

As the steam server offers many ways to access the virtual rooms it become popular to write PHP applications using the steam server as middleware.
so does a project management software called xpertise offering micro and macro structures, versionmanagement for documents (with draft, proposal and approved versions) using the virtual knowledge rooms and their flexibility.
The xpertise tool was presented on this years iknow conference in graz, austria: xpertise paper (PDF)

The xpertise demonstrator view is available under:
http://xpertise.open-steam.org/
(Please note that you need a login on our Demo Server to be able to log in and test it.

we announce the launch of our new sTeam Ware website offering additional packages to extend the steam server with new functionality. e.g. admin tools, calendar or some specific didactic settings like homework, routeplan or pyramiddiscussion.

you can find information about the webinterface, package installation and the possibility to be notified of changes on the packages source code if you want to keep on track with the latest changes of packages you are interested in
more...

This website was generated using our steamweb website generator which uses a steam server as middleware.

From now on this website uses the new cache mechanisms of the steamweb code which delivers this website approx. 3-5 times faster as without caching mechanism.

In an interview for the widely read digital newsletter "Checkpoint eLearning" Prof. Keil highlighted the virtues of "virtual knowledge spaces" and expressed the need for extended cooperative capabilities of traditional learning management systems (LMS).
Read the article at checkpoint eLearning (german)

Due to some replacement at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute we have to shut down our servers located at the HNI (including our webservers *.open-steam.org and our Demo Server steam.upb.de) from 14.7.2006 - 17.7.2006

There are many ways to access the sTeam Server. We set up an alternative view to the content of the Server using PHP to let you test the flexibility of the system.
The alternative view is available under:
http://bid-demo.open-steam.org/
(Please note that you need a login on our Demo Server to be able to log in and test it.

Please be aware that this alternative view displays the data of our demo server.
The "Bidowl" view uses the steam server as a middleware.
This special view is written in php accessing the steam server using the PHPsTeam API.

We decided to move our Java API into its own CVS module to separate the API from the applications. We also moved all information about how to develop Java applications for steam to a new website called "JavaSteam".

You can find some examples, the API as .jar and the whole Documentation on javasteam.open-steam.org.

Auf der CeBit 2006 in Hannover ist das Projekt mistel als Kooperation der Universitäten Duisburg-Essen und Paderborn auf dem Gemeinschaftsstand Innovationsland Nordrhein-Westfalen vertreten: Halle 9, Stand C016

Wir freuen uns auf Ihren Besuch!

www.cebit.de

We relaunched our website with our new design.

We decided to separate www.open-steam.org from steam.upb.de, which was previously just an alias. www.open-steam.org now hosts our official websites and steam.upb.de is our demo-server. Websites published on our demo server will be available at steam.upb.de/yourwebsite (not at www.open-steam.org/yourwebsite).

If you need your website available on www.open-steam.org please contact us: info@open-steam.org

The new eclipse based Whiteboard Client v1.0M1 has reached developer release milestone one. Using Eclipse Rich Client (RCP) technologie, Eclipse Modelling Framework (EMF) and Grafical Editor Framework (GEF) the WhiteboardNG (medi@rena composer) provides basic functions for cooperative work on the CSCW/CSCL system sTeam.

For detailed information see the Mediarena Composer Download Section

As a result of the diploma of Michael Vonrueden, there is a tool named "visCOntE" - visual Cooperative Ontology Environment available in sTeam which is made to view and modify Ontologies using the Webinterface of sTeam.

There are more features described in the description of the visCOntE Tool (german)

Screenshot of the visCOntE- Tool

It is possible to run the sTeam Server 2.0 on Mac OS X. Check out how to install the sTeam Server on Mac OS X.
To install the steam Server 2.0 on other *IX Systems see our Server 2.0 Install WiKi

Just now the steam based platform is online. The platform supports interested women in Soest with specific information. it uses special sTeam features to provide an internal area where the woman are able to discuss things together, share files, make announcements, provide some personal information to get in contact with other women interested in the same things , exchange experiences and manage the exchange of some interesting books.
The platform will be administrated by Mrs. Bracht from Kreis Soest and is available at:
www.frauennetzwerk-hellweg.de

The start of this platform made it into the local press:

Media NRW : Vernetzte Frauen - Internetplattform unterstützt bei fachlichem und persönlichem Austausch
Lippstadt am Sonntag: Frauennetzwerk Hellweg Online - Internetplattform unterstützt bei fachlichem Austausch
Der Patriot: Online statt Stammtisch - Frauennetzwerk gründet Internetplattform zum fachlichen und persönlichen Austausch

Since there were enough major changes in the 1.7 development version in comparison with the 1.6 stable version (version management, persistence layers, etc.), we now officially present the new stable version 2.0 of the open-sTeam server software. Development of new features will be performed on the new 2.1 development version. The new versions are available via cvs, the modules are called steam-2_0 and steam-2_1.

When installing version 2.0 make sure that you also install version 1.76 (or later) of the web package to be able to access some of the new server features. The new web package also offers a lot of accessability improvements, relying on cascading stylesheets instead of table layouts.

There have been some bugfixes and code cleanup since server version 1.7, though the list of new features is, of course, mostly the same:

• version management
• persistence layer support
• extension mechanism via spm packages
• support for Java services

The installation procedure has been more simplified, running "./install" should be enough on most systems. The default location for configuration and log files has been moved (/etc/steam and /var/log/steam).

Since 05.09.2005, the new server version 1_7 and webinterface version 1_7 is running on our demo server www.open-steam.org.

The new version comes with a webinterface which was completely re-written and uses all the current techniques to generate the pages dynamically.
Webinterface improvements:

• webinterface got rid of table layouts and completely uses CSS
• version management is available for all documents. Differences between versions can be shown for text based files.
• webinterface source code is valid HTML now (just take a look using your browsers "view source code" option)
• fits most of the issues to be "barrier-free".

Server improvements:

• version management (see above)
• support for persistence layers with new dynamic-length object ids (backwards compatible)
• improved extension mechanism (via spm packages)
• support for Java-based services
• stability improvements

If you want to have a look, just register for free and have a look at our demo server (you are able to use the full functionality without any restrictions)

sTeam will be at the Linuxtag in Karlsruhe once again. We are going to demonstrate our new version and especially our new Wiki capabilities.
Our location this year is Y45.

the debian installation package made it into the debian testing ("sarge") distribution and is available as official package.
it is available via "apt-get steam" now.

Our demo-site www.open-steam.org runs the latest sTeam Version now (1.7 - unstable). If you notice any problems please let us know. The server seems pretty stable right now...

The new features are:

• Service Infrastructure improved. We are currently working on web services


• Persistence Manager: instead of a fixed persistence layer we designed a manager for different layers.


• Stability issues: we changed some code that caused problems (connection handling and database reader threads)

The current sTeam version (1.6.1) offers Wiki support. You can just create a document with a .wiki extension and start your own wiki pages. Note that the sTeam Wiki is quite different from other wiki engines and uses the room as a basis for wiki creation and manipulation.
We have just started a new Server Documentation using this new technology.

The sTeam Demo- Server steam.upb.de is back on the net since thursday, 3rd march 2005. We used the time to move our demo server onto a new machine which provides us with much more power. So we hope you are going to enjoy the new speed.

Unfortunately we had some data loss due to a harddisk problem which affected our backups too.
We are able to restore all user data so your login have to work right now
Due to data loss and a lot of very old and unused Data on our Demo Server we decided not to restore all content generally.
So if you want your data back please mail to info@open-steam.org and specify the Group or the Path of the data you need and we will do our best to get your data back into the system.
We are able to restore the whole structure and inform you exactly which of the restored files are corrupted and which are not

The latest sTeam version offers jabbers instant messaging support. Just connect with jabber to the sTeam server (steam.upb.de) using your nickname (@steam.upb.de) and password.

It is possible to add contacts in the form user@steam.upb.de and group@steam.upb.de. Adding a group contact will subscribe the groups workroom.

the shared whiteboard and the chat applet of the standard webinterface offer a new feature "buddylist" where the user can add some friends to have them available for chat with one click.
the status of the buddies will be displayed so you are able to see if your buddy is going to be available via chat in the sTeam system.

additionally the whiteboard is able to produce SVG which you can save to disk and view it with an external SVG- viewer. for special purposes it is possible to upload the generated SVG image directly onto the server. special stylesheets make the integrated SVG view visible. please feel free to ask us if you want to know more about our brand- new feature.

Get the newest Version of the whiteboard client

After being in use for more than a year at the national level, IAESTE Austria went a step further with a nationwide introduction at the local level.

sTeam presentations and introductions have been held at a tour to every local commitee of IAESTE Austria by one of our developers in november.

The presentations were welcomed and the feedback was very positive.

This years Pike Camp in Essen will be hosting a sTeam developers day. The new developments and features in the upcoming sTeam version 1.6 will be presented, as well as reports from recent deployments like in china.
sTeam developers day is the 14th of october 2004. Location is the Unperfekthaus in Essen.

mr daniel buese (l.) and director xu lixun (r.) presenting the new steam server of the cdtf

in the last three weeks scientists of paderborn and qingdao, china worked together to establish an e-learning platform in the chinese german techical faculty (cdtf) in qingdao. this faculty was born in a cooperation of the qingdao university of science and technologie (qust), china and the university of paderborn, germany. right now, the cdtf runs their own steam server to deal with all e- learning issues in qingdao.

Martin is configuring our network

sTeam is presented on the Linuxtag fair in Karlsruhe from 23rd to 26th june. We are located at a community stand H105 sharing the boot with some other projects related to content management. After a succesfull set up on tuesday evening the fair goes on very well and we have a lot of interested visitors on our first day in Karlsruhe.

Daniel demonstrates the power of steam

sTeam will again be presented at the LinuxTag. Together with the projects Pike and Caudium, we will have a booth where we can showcase the power of sTeam. Have a look at the list of projects (german version).

The development version of sTeam 1.5.1 will be installed
on this server on Thursday. The new server features a lot of
improvements. Clients will also be updated soon to work with
the new server release.

Users may encounter some bugs in the following days - we hope things will run smoothly though (code has been tested on our development server for quite some time).
The open-steam server is going to be tested until after the Cebit and other sTeam servers will be updated afterwards to the new version. Please let us know if you encounter a bug.

opensTeam will be present on the CeBIT in Hannover from 18.3.2004 to 24.3.2004. Our stand is located in hall 11, stand D37. In a joint presentation of developers and users the research group Contextual Informatics, the Laboratory for Technical Mechanics, the University of Paderborn's Technologie Transfer Point and the regional forum Education in Dialogue will demonstrate their applications of open sTeam. Additionally, we are going to present our brand new steam version 1_5 with a lot of improvements.

If you are going to visit the CeBIT 2004, don't forget to visit us at hall 11, stand D37.

See also: the university's press release (german)

steam is present on the learntec fair in karlsruhe from 10.2.2004 to 13.02.2004. special issue of our stand is the demonstration of the shared whiteboard and the usage of the whiteboard during the cscw- course in the last semester. we are located at stand nr. 215 of the schwarzwaldhalle

steam stand

our sTeam PDA client is now available in CVS and as install- package for the sharp zaurus in our download- section.

steam PDA Client on a sharp zaurus

The office of the sTeam project has moved on 23.1.2004. the new Room number is F1.419. Our new telephone number is 05251 606518.
The sTeam office has moved due to new room plans in our building. Dr. Thorsten Hampel now has his own office located on F1.101 and the developers thomas, bernd and daniel are located in a shared office now to intensify their team work.
View some pictures of our movement

a new stable version of sTeam has been released!

webinterface changes
* rearranged admin interface
* support for multilanguage containers
* internationalization (german/english) complete
* added lots of help texts
* rearranged group dialogs

core server changes
* internal http and ftp support
* new socket code
* improved linkreplacement (and turned off by default)
* groups can be moved now
* mails can be sent to any object in sTeam now.
* improved monitor annotation output.

debian packages are available.
look at our short HOWTO to install sTeam on debian.

The development of the new steam kernel has started a few weeks ago and quite a lot of progress has been made. Event and Attribute support has been partially rewritten and a new database schema with improved search possibilities was prepared.

The new sources can be downloaded from CVS (the name of
the module is steam-1_5).

The application launcher is able to use a secure connection to receive/transmit data from/to the steam server.
To enable this feature please start the launcher without any parameter (on windows: just double- click the application- launcher icon) and check the "use secure connection" option on the configuration panel.
The usage of a secure connection is disabled by default because there can be some servers which are not "up to date" and therefore dont support this feature.

Get the new Version of the Application Launcher

With participants from New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Sweden, Poland, France, Austria and Germany, this years Pike Conference was a great success.

Results and photos will be available soon.

The application launcher allows editing documents locally. Changes will be uploaded automatically. The launcher can be configured easily to start a specific application to edit a special type of documents. To read more about the application launcher please check out the application launcher in our download area.

Features:

• automatic upload of changes
• available as quick edit-link within the webinterface of steam
• feedback of upload results
• edit documents with your favorite application on your local system
• runs with windows, linux, solaris
• for developers: automatic reload of changed XML code, automatic compilation of changed pike- sourcecode.