I am a Java/C++ developer with 10+ years experience but I am very new to CMS. I am researching Moodle to see if it will work they way we want it to in our corporate environment.
I have been reading on the forums about folks customizing Moodle, but how do those changes get carried over in future releases? Does each user need to track what they changed about Moodle and re-apply those patches when they upgrade Moodle. I feel like I am missing something.
Also, can Moodle integrate with J2EE apps? If so, how? I have not seen anything that states how this can be done.
Thanks
Tracking local customisations, and merging them in to a new version of Moodle whenever one is released is certainly an important issue to think about before you start customising the code. However, with the right source code management tools (SVN, GIT or CVS) it is perfectly possible, just don't expect it to be totally automatic.
Can you integrate with J2EE? Well that depends on what you are trying to do. Different web applications can always communicate with each other just be one pretending to be a web browser and requesting pages from the other. If you do that properly it gets called web services.
Another way two applications can communicate is by both accessing the same database to update information that the other uses.
But to answer your question properly, we really need to know what you are trying to achieve. Why do you want to integrate them.
However, if you really want to mess around with Moodle's internals, you are going to have to do it in PHP. If you are a good Java programmer, you are going to find PHP easy to learn, but you are also going to find it pretty horrible.
Can you integrate with J2EE? Well that depends on what you are trying to do. Different web applications can always communicate with each other just be one pretending to be a web browser and requesting pages from the other. If you do that properly it gets called web services.
Another way two applications can communicate is by both accessing the same database to update information that the other uses.
But to answer your question properly, we really need to know what you are trying to achieve. Why do you want to integrate them.
However, if you really want to mess around with Moodle's internals, you are going to have to do it in PHP. If you are a good Java programmer, you are going to find PHP easy to learn, but you are also going to find it pretty horrible.
Michael Klem replied by private email (naughty, naughty!):
There are at least two ways to solve this.
The high-tech way is to investigate enrolment plugins. These are designed to help you synchronise your list of courses, and which users are allowed to access which courses in what roles, from external systems into Moodle. You may find one of the existing plugins can be used, or you may need to write a new one.
I low-tech way is just to get your J2EE system to connect to the Moodle database and poke rows directly in to the mdl_course table, which is all it takes to create a new course in Moodle.
The reason I ask about J2EE integration is that we already have built an app for some clients that lets them create courses. I want to retain that business logic/ui and see if we can take advantage of what already exists in Moodle to add more functionality to our app.
There are at least two ways to solve this.
The high-tech way is to investigate enrolment plugins. These are designed to help you synchronise your list of courses, and which users are allowed to access which courses in what roles, from external systems into Moodle. You may find one of the existing plugins can be used, or you may need to write a new one.
I low-tech way is just to get your J2EE system to connect to the Moodle database and poke rows directly in to the mdl_course table, which is all it takes to create a new course in Moodle.
Yes - I usually recommend enrolment plugins pointing to a VIEW (perhaps materialised) that has all the business logic.