Get a quick overview of a few key technical aspects of ownCloud Infinite Scale
As our modernized file platform ownCloud Infinite Scale takes shape, we have started to publish a few technical outlook posts on our community forum ownCloud Central. Please feel free to register over there and get involved in the community! If you lack the time or technical curiosity, we’ve summarized it for you here.
Seamless
After an initial overview of our development focuses, we outlined how we leverage the tus protocol to make uploads better through resumability and chunking. In short, it remembers exactly where an upload left off and is able to resume the upload seamlessly. It also chunks uploads into bite-sized pieces, thereby enabling faster uploads and also accomodating users that are limited in their maximum request sizes by useful middleware like Cloudflare.
Secure
Then we explained how ownCloud Infinite Scale leverages OpenID Connect for swifter and safer authentication. In short, every time a user proves her identity, she does so against the identity provider (IdP), so her password and other authentication factors are neither stored in ownCloud nor in the client. Rather, the IdP issues a token that enables access according to the users permissions. It can be selectively revoked, so a user doesn’t neccessarily have to change her password after e.g. losing a mobile phone. Most organizations already run a compatible IdP so ownCloud Infinite Scale fits into their existing ecosystem without replicating functionality. For those that don’t already have an IdP or want to switch to increase digital sovereignty, ownCloud Infinite Scale comes with an open-source IdP called Kopano Konnect.
Agile
Process-wise, we have switched to agile development and scrum some time ago, the surrounding hype notwithstanding. The result: We gained productivity but especially internal transparency. Our development and review cycles have become shorter as our developers know better what their colleagues are up to, improving collaboration. A big part of this are our bi-weekly sprint reviews where we show each other what we’ve been working on.
To learn more about our progress towards releasing ownCloud Infinite Scale, please also read our reasoning for using Golang instead of PHP and about the origins of Vue.js, the Javascript framework we use for our new web interface that will support both ownCloud Infinite Scale and ownCloud 10.