Monday 28 July 2008

Emergency Maintenance - 29 July

Owing to a hardware failure over the weekend of 26/27 July, some emergency maintenance is required on Digimap's service machine.

All Digimap Collections will be unavailable betwen 09.00 and 14.00 hours on Tuesday 29 July 2008. This will allow engineers to fix the problem. Full service will be restored as quickly as possible. Further updates will be posted here and on the Digimap login page as and when available.

Wednesday 23 July 2008

Update: 23 July emergency maintenance

Following a hardware failure yesterday evening, engineers have now identified the faulty machine part. This is scheduled for replacement tomorrow, Thursday 24 July.

As a consequence, all Digimap Collections will be unavailable between 10.00hrs and 13.00hrs.

While the faulty part remains in place, Digimap may become unavailable at short notice. EDINA staff are monitoring all services closely during office hours and will endeavour to maintain access as long as possible.

Thank you for your forebearance.

Emergency maintenance: 23 July

On the evening of Tuesday 22 July, the service machine which runs all Digimap facilities suffered a serious hardware failure. This meant that all services became unavailable and engineers were unable to access the machine. This morning, Wednesday 23 July, engineers have managed to identify the problem, and have temporarily restored full service capability.

However, until the faulty hardware is replaced, all Digimap Collections will remain unstable and may become unavailable at any time. Engineers are monitoring the service closely, and further information will be posted when available.

Replacing faulty hardware
Later today, it will be necessary to withdraw access to Digimap in order to replace the faulty hardware. As much notice of this as possible will be given, both here and on the Digimap login page.

Hardware failure is an unfortunate and unpredictable hazard; EDINA is doing as much as possible to mitigate the impact of such events and apologises for any inconvenience caused.

Thursday 17 July 2008

Withdrawal of Land-Line

Digimap will cease to deliver Land-Line.Plus data at the end of August 2008.

As a registered Digimap user you may continue to hold and use any Land-Line.Plus data you already have until 31 July 2009. Beyond this date, you will be required to delete any Land-Line.Plus data you hold, and will not be licensed to use it thereafter.

Land-Line map of urban area

Land-Line.Plus has been replaced by OS MasterMap Topography Layer. These data are available from Digimap's MasterMap Download facility, within the Ordnance Survey Collection. The OS MasterMap Topography Layer is as detailed as Land-Line.Plus but contains a much richer attribute set. It is also available in GML format, rather than NTF.

Corresponding OS MasterMap Topography Layer map of urban area

More information about OS MasterMap can be found within the Digimap Help pages.

Tuesday 15 July 2008

Are you fully "Shibbolised"?

From 1 August 2008, access to Digimap will be via the UK federation only. If your institution has not made appropriate provision for this change, users at your institution will not be able to gain access to any Digimap Collection.

While there is a considerable volume of documentation about the transition between Athens and Shibboleth, there are one or two points relating to Digimap which may have been overlooked and which we would like to draw to your attention.

User Accountability
Regardless of which method your institution is employing to access Digimap, it will need to assert user accountability. Broadly speaking, this means that the institution must able to trace activity in any given session to an individual. User identifiers must not be reused or recycled according to a specific policy, and access to resources must be withdrawn in a timely fashion, when appropriate. You can read more about asserting user accountability in the UK federation's Rules of Membership (section 6, here: http://www.ukfederation.org.uk/library/uploads/Documents/rules-of-membership.pdf

and on the UK federation website, point 9, here: http://www.ukfederation.org.uk/content/Documents/AttributeUsageNotes.


If your institution is not asserting user accountability, all users will be denied access to all Digimap Collections, except Historic Digimap.

Open Athens
If your institution is using OpenAthens, it will be necessary to have a virtual Identity Provider with Eduserv in order for your institution to be able to assert user accountability. Accessing Digimap using the "Eduserv Athens" option in the WAYF will not give your users access to Digimap, since it is not possible to assert user accountability by this method.

Error Messages
If your institution does not yet assert user accountability, you will see a message to this effect when you try to log in to Digimap. If you see this message, please contact someone in your institution who deals with your UK federation implementation. EDINA cannot change this for you.

Using a local Identity Provider
If your institution is running its own Identity Provider, you may find the list of technical requirements on the EDINA website useful. If you are having trouble accessing Digimap while testing your Shibboleth implementation, please check that your Identity Provider is releasing the appropriate attributes, as given in the above list.

No UK federation?
If your institution has not registered with the UK federation, does not have an in-house Identity Provider or has not registered with OpenAthens, action is required as soon as possible. Setting up access to online resources via the UK federation is not an instant process.

EDINA has identified from publicly available lists, that there are some institutions subscribing to Digimap which appear not to be registered either with the UK federation or with OpenAthens. Users at these institutions will not be able to access Digimap at all from 1 August 2008.

If your institution is unable to set up access to online resources via the UK federation by 1 August, please contact the EDINA Helpdesk, where we will refer you to JISC Collections. You can telephone us on 0131 650 3302 or contact us by email: edina@ed.ac.uk

Re-registration - retaining personalisation

The imminent changes to authentication mechanisms across the UK tertiary education sector have implications for access to Digimap. A change of login credentials may mean that users are required to re-register with Digimap in order to continue accessing the service.

From 1 August 2008, access to Digimap will be via the UK federation only. This will mean that all subscribing institutions must offer their users access to Digimap through one of two methods:

1. using OpenAthens
2. via an in-house Shibboleth Identity Provider

Whichever method your institution chooses, one of the following re-registration consequences will apply:

  • Users who are already registered and continue to access Digimap through the OpenAthens service should not be required to re-register for Digimap.
  • Users who are already accessing Digimap using their institution's in-house Shibboleth Identity Provider (i.e. are already registered with their Shibboleth credentials) will also not be required to re-register

  • Institutions moving from classic Athens or Athens DA authentication to using their own in-house Shibboleth Identity Provider should be prepared for all their Digimap users having to re-register.
This applies to all those Digimap Collections which require a secondary registration (currently Marine Digimap, Geology Digimap and Digimap's Ordnance Survey Collection). Any change to an institutional login account will result in a requirement for users to re-register their new account details with Digimap. Indeed, those who have already made the transition from Athens to Shibboleth will already have undertaken this re-registration.

When users are issued with UK federation login credentials, they will need to register these new credentials with Digimap. However, this means that any personalisation (including data download histories for MasterMap Download) associated with their previous (Athens) accounts will not be accessible through their new account. To ease the transition process, EDINA has implemented a linking mechanism between existing Athens registrations and new Shibboleth registrations. This is a two-stage process:

Stage 1
The first stage is to collect some additional information from each user, in the form of a question and answer, while they are still accessing Digimap with their Athens-based login credentials. For example, the user may be asked "what is your favourite place?", to which the reply might be "New York". From the date of implementation of this facility, all Digimap users have been asked to complete this process when they log in. This additional step is only required once, not once per Collection, but must be completed before access can be gained to the service.

Stage 2
The second stage of the linking mechanism occurs when a user logs in with a new set of (UK federation-based) credentials which have not yet been registered with Digimap, and will only occur if the user has completed the first stage of the process with their previous account details. With these new credentials the user is guided through an abbreviated form of the Digimap registration process. If the details submitted by the user (surname and email address) match an existing set of details, the user will be asked to confirm the answer to their chosen question (as per stage one). Assuming the question is answered correctly, the two registration records will then be linked and any personalisation within Digimap will be available to the user under their new login credentials.

This process is not able to catch all new account holders, since it relies on users submitting a surname and email address for their new login credentials which are identical to those they submitted using their previous (Athens) credentials. For example, an email address submitted with Athens credentials as user@student.institution.ac.uk will not match an email address submitted with the same individual's UK federation credentials as user@institution.ac.uk, even though both addresses may function, and may reach the same person. We also understand from our site representatives that some users don't always spell their surnames the same way!

Those users who do not log in with their Athens accounts and complete stage one of this process will not be able to link their existing account to any new account. Such users will need to register their new UK federation accounts in the usual way, and will not be able to retain any personalisation which existed with their previous account. Those users who already have both Athens and UK federation accounts registered with Digimap will not be able to link personalisation information between the two. However, logging in with a new Shibboleth account will allow users to link to a previous Shibboleth account.

This information has previously been published in EDINA Newsline (June 2008). An email with this information was also sent to all users on 12 June 2008.

Monday 14 July 2008

Class access to Digimap

From 1 August 2008, when Digimap will be accessible via the UK federation only, it will no longer be possible to register a class to use Digimap under a single username. All access to Digimap will be by individual registration only.

UK federation rules do not permit more than one individual to access any resource under the same set of credentials. In addition, institutions subscribing to any Digimap Collection (except Historic Digimap) must assert "user accountability". This means that the institution is able to trace activity in any given session to an individual. Clearly this is not possible if user identifiers (which are used to authenticate sessions within online resources) are shared between a group such as a class.



If you are a student, and need to register individually rather than using a class account...

Online registration is straightforward. Go to http://edina.ac.uk/digimap and click the Login (UK federation) button. If there is only one login button visible, click on it. Choose your institution from the drop-down list and enter your username and password if requested. If you are already registered for a Digimap Collection you will gain access to it when you click on the Collection banner. If you are not already registered for your chosen Collection, you will be asked to complete the online registration form. Please fill this in carefully, making sure your email address is correct. When your application has been processed you will receive an email to this effect.



If you are a member of staff wishing to give your class an exercise to do with Digimap...

You will need to make sure that all members of your class are registered individually with the Digimap Collection they need to use. This means they will each need their own username and password, and will need to register online as above.

Please note that it can take 2 working days to process applications. At busy times of year (September, October, November), and if an application needs to be queried, it may take longer than this. The processing time will also depend on the response time from the user. If you need to ask members of a class to register as individuals, please bear this timescale in mind.

Friday 11 July 2008

Training Needs Survey

EDINA strives to provide face-to-face training for Digimap which is appropriate, comprehensive and meets the needs of site representatives in supporting Digimap. To this end, we are conducting a training needs survey, in order to establish how to improve the training we offer for Digimap. The results of the survey will inform a review of current training and will assist us in improving what we offer.

The survey is online and should not take more than two or three minutes to complete. Please click the link below. We welcome your views.

Click here for the Digimap Training Survey

If you have comments you would like to make but can't find an appropriate place in the survey to do so, please phone us, or email the EDINA Training Officer on edina-training@ed.ac.uk

Friday 4 July 2008

New cartography for geology maps

The Geology Maps facility in Geology Digimap has been greatly enhanced by upgrading the technology. The maps now use a transparency technique to represent rock types in colour, rather than hatching. The result has been much clearer maps, more closely matching their paper counterparts printed by the British Geological Survey. It also makes it easier to see the underlying context mapping, as well as identifying which rock types overlay which. Below are some examples of the new colour scheme.

Old and new versions, clearly labelled

The previous version of Geology Maps is still available for those who have become accustomed to it or have created training courses based upon it. This version is clearly labelled "old". It will be withdrawn at the start of the next academic year (2008/9) when we hope everyone will be enjoying the benefits of the new maps.

New style cartography, using transparency

Old style cartography, using traditional hatching methods