Slot for Plugin to sign exams digitally

1 Requirements

At the moment it is not possible to sign exams digitally. Therefore we want to create a Plugin, responsible for signing exams. The idea is that the plugin is capable of starting any kind of applet, which implements some sort of digital signing mechanism. The Plugin invokes the applet and delivers the path of the finished exam. After signing the exam the applet sends back to ILIAS the exam plus signature file(s) (which can be (qualified) electronic signature and/or (qualified) electronic time stamps files. The Plugin can be installed/activated when needed. Therefore the functionality to sign the exam is optional. For this planned development a plugin slot is neeeded.
 
Details can be found in the attached flow diagram.

2 Status

• Scheduled for: Release 4.4
• Funding: DHBW / optes
• Development: Feature is to be developed by Databay AG

3 Additional Information

• If you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding, please contact: Nadine Köcher / koecher@dhbw-karlsruhe.de

4 Discussion

JF 15 Apr 2013: We support this plugin slot. The slot should try to set only a minimum of technical implications of the concrete plugins. If possible, it would be nice to have a general "digital signature" service for PDF (are other file types possilble, too) underlying in ILIAS. This service could be used by other components as well (not necessarily plugins), e.g. the "certificate" service.

MB 30. Mar 2015: Added implementation paragraph as requested.

5 Implementation

This feature was implemented for ILIAS 4.4.x. Extensive documentation about the plugin slot is available on the DevGuide.
Test-Signature Plugins

In short:
The plugin slot is called at the end of the test and routes into a method "invoke" which allows for a variety of signature processes and strategies.
Once finished, control is "handed back" to the ILIAS test.