Improve NIC registration

1 Requirements

When setting up a new client ILIAS offers you to register this client / installation and to get a unique NIC ID. Aim of this ID is to identify a single ILIAS client worldwide. At the time being the NIC ID is used to identify relations between several content items (e.g. ILIAS LM and glossary) when importing it from another installation.

Weakness of Current implementation

No update of NIC information after first registration: The NIC server at ILIAS society is only notified about a client when it's installed. Once the NIC information has been transfered to the NIC server, this server never hears again any sign of life from this installation. There is no information about the currently used ILIAS version, too. Such data could be very helpful for release planning and offering support. But it would require an update of the NIC data at least with every change of version.

Suggestions to improve feature

Update NIC information automatically: With every change to a new major release (5.2.x, 5.3.x, ...) the NIC information of the current client should be updated automatically.

• The currently unused field itime could be used to store the date of the last update of the NIC information.
• An additional field version needs to be added to store the information of the ILIAS version used when updating the client.
• The field server_software should be extended and store information about the used database as well.

Open issues

Knowing about existence of unregistered clients: As it is open to everyone to register a client or not, we have no idea about how many ILIAS installations are running worldwide. A kind of anonymised registration would be helpful. This should only notify about the existence of this installation and its version but neither about its IP nor URL or any other personal or institutional data.

2 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel]
• Interest in funding: ILIAS-Verein
  
• Maintainer: Meyer, Stefan [smeyer]
• Implementation of the feature is done by (will be set by Jour Fixe / maintainer)
• Testcases by: (please add your name if you want to create the testcases for this feature)

3 Discussion

4 Implementation

{please give a description of the final implementation and add screenshots if possible}

Test Cases

Test cases completed at {date} by {user}

• {Test case number linked to Testrail} : {test case title}

Approval

Approved at {date} by {user}.