Towards a Generic Service Oriented Framework for Integrated User Management of Virtual Communities

A central Service layer for the European eLearning Grid Infrastructure (ELeGI) is the one for the management of members and the provision of collaborational services (Virtual Community Services). Because it is a lot of effort to totally newly (re-)write the collaboration services like e.g. a videoconferencing service, it is much more desirable to take existing applications and just to wrap them with a Web Service interface to programmatically access the existing functionality relevant to user management. Thus, it is intended to create a pic’n’mix architecture, where existing collaboration tools can be easily added or removed. Furthermore it will be thought about how the user interface could look like for the members of a Virtual Community, providing single sign on and making the switching between the tools as smooth and elegant as possible while always keeping an eye on the work involved for developers and administrators. In the area of integrated user management, Web and Grid Services can live up to their full integrational power, providing real added value with the achieved interoperability. This article focuses on the Virtual Community service layer and provides first deeper thoughts on how the architecture regarding user management and user interface integration could look like.