This is a quick update about the work going by the team building integration between Moodle and Elgg.

Having just been given a run down of the excellent work being done by Catalyst IT - Martin, Penny and Co - not only are they facilitating integration between Moodle and Elgg, they are also improving/enhancing Elgg.

The new code is curently under testing conditions, once this phase is complete their work will be rolled straight into the Elgg trunk.

In short, here are some of the improvements you can expect to see:

1. Integration of the standard ADODB database access library. This means that Elgg is no longer limited to MySQL; it can use Postgres, forexample, and theoretically the possibilities also include Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, DB2, SQLite and generic ODBC databases. Database upgrades are now automatic.
2. Increased security from cross site scripting attacks
   
3. Uploads to the file repository can be scanned for viruses on servers with ClamAV installed.
4. Elgg is now end-to-end UTF-8 compliant; this means it will support your character set. No more weird HTML entities or broken RSS feeds.
5. The open source PHPmailer project has been integrated for outgoing mail; this potentially allows for HTML emails, attachments and more functionality down the line.
6. Configuration settings have been moved to config.php. No more accidentally overwriting your settings in includes.php!
7. The plugin system has been revamped; running a plugin is literally as simple as placing it in a directory. An internal authentication plugin already exists, and more is to follow. Plugins can take advantage of an internal cron-based scheduler.
8. Uploaded data has been moved from the web root
9. And, of course, Elgg now integrates with Moodle. Users can choose resources they would like to bring across from their Moodle account.

We will make an announcement when the new code is ready, in the meantime, if anyone is interested in piloting the new Moodle/Elgg integration please get in touch with Dave.  dave |at | elgg |dot| net