1. Background
MIT's Permissions Management is currently provided through the RolesDB, which has been in production use for over a decade. The perMIT project aims to translate the RolesDB into an open source community project that could be deployed at other sites. Also, perMIT is expected to provided a drop-in replacement for the current RolesDB without disrupting existing applications, systems, and services.
2. Findings
- High Availability
In order to meet current developer and user expectations of 24x7 operations, it is important for services providing web interfaces to be highly available. To assure that perMIT meets these needs, high availability should be added to the project's scope, making it a priority for release. In general, MIT could benefit from additional experience with the development and operation of highly available services.
- Financial Concerns
In light of the current economic climate, and the Institute's budget reductions, further MIT specific justifications for the continued work on perMIT are needed. Though supporting open source and contributing code back to the larger community is important, it is no longer a compelling project driver in and of itself.
- Review of Current RolesDB Clients
For perMIT to be successful at MIT, it must provide a drop-in replacement for the RolesDB that works with all existing Roles systems. To meet this requirement, the method in which some current RolesDB clients directly access the database using an Oracle Clients should be reviewed, documented and shared with the perMIT developers.
3. Recommendation from the TAP Consultation
DRAFT