Sakai 2.2 changes

You may notice that I've made a subtle change in some of the APIs.   
What used to be:

SERVICE_NAME

and was set to the api class's full package name is now:

APPLICATION_ID

and is set to a specific string.

This is to start to address a problem that I should have learned by  
now.  We have in the past, and continue to this day, use the service  
API names in the code in ways that end up in the database in various  
ways.  So when we re-organize the code (this is the third major re- 
org of this code base), and change all the API names, we need a  
database conversion.

Specifically, user preferences for email notification are stored for  
a number of services (syllabus, announcement, etc), and the storage  
of these preferences ended up with the API name.  These will have to  
be converted for 2.2.

So to fix this ONCE AND FOR EVER (cause while I love the new API  
names, after 3 re-orgs, a 4th won't surprise me down the road), I'm  
introducing the idea of an "application  id", which is a string that  
WILL NOT CHANGE, and is most specifically NOT an API full path name.

A Reference's getType() will return the APPLICATION_ID of the  
application that owns the entity being referenced.

This type will be used in the storage of user preferences that are  
application scoped.

The type also shows up in the old archive/merge XML file format.  So  
any files from older versions of Sakai will need to be translated or  
interpretated at runtime to recognize the old API (and that's the OLD  
API) based tag names.  New files in this format will have the new  
fixed-string application ids that will never in the future change.

I've taken care of all the code in the sakai 2.2. distribution for  
this, so you might see some small change in your applications.  And  
there might be an outlier application that I didn't get to that  
should be changed in this way.

(Ian, I did this change to rwiki.  Ray - I didn't see where Gradebook  
handles references and sets the type, or handles archive/merge, so if  
I missed that, lets work on getting that updated).

Thanks.

- Glenn

Glenn R. Golden
Software Architect, University Of Michigan
ggolden@xxxxxxxxx



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