Resources needed to integrate iTunes U with existing authentication?

Question

I have been reading the on-line and PDF iTunes U Admin guide for a few days now.
I think I can handle most administration issues, but not how to integrate iTunes U with our existing authentication system, described here http://bit.ly/7oAzpp
I believe ours is LDAP based.
Not sure other staff have the time to do it. We may have some CS students that might be able to tackle it.
As an alternative, are there outside services that might specialize in this?
Any rough amount of hours or cost?
I am looking at options, and welcome any feedback.

Answer 1

Frank, in answer to your questions…
Frank Fulchiero wrote:
1. What technologies does one have to be familiar with to write up iTunes U authentication with existing authentication systems? In the sample download, there are files in C, Java, Perl and Python. Do you need to know all of these, in addition to HTML?
You do not need to know any particular language…Apple's examples are just starting places. Each of those code samples does exactly the same thing, just in a different language. In addition to the samples that Apple provides, others have written similar code samples in languages like C#, VB.Net, and Ruby. "In principle", you could use a language not yet explored by others (say Erlang or Haskell or whatever)…but you would need to do pretty much what the other code samples do.
If I had to give a rough summary of what you would need to know to implement an iTunes U portal, it'd run like this:
1. You need to be able to setup a web server. It can be any sort of server with which you are most comfortable…IIS in Windows, Apache running on Linux, or OS X Server's web server (which is also Apache)…or even something else.
2. You need to know how to get CGI running on your chosen web server. The actual CGI code can be in any language you like (Apple's samples are in Perl, C, Python, etc., as you pointed out). But you need to know how to get CGI code installed and working on your web server. In addition, you need to know just enough about how the code works to adapt it to suit your specific institution.
3. You need to know just enough about how authentication works at your site to access it in code. "Usually" this is fairly straightforward…but Apple's code samples do not show how to do this—they can't because every institution handles authentication differently…some use LDAP, others Active Directory, some use Banner…others use things like eDirectory—each of these packages gives you a way to determine with a login or bind is going to work.
Frank Fulchiero wrote:
2. We are considering pilots with only a few faculty and 50-100 students. I am wondering if it would be any easier, in order to get started, to use OSX Server 10.6' Users and Groups and Open Directory for authentication, instead of our college's AD, and just manually enter the users. Due to security concerns, our network admins might find this more acceptable.
Certainly that would work. One of the nifty things about iTunes U is that you're not married to any solution you implement…you can always change/grow into something different later.