Message-Id: <199710242104.OAA15682@mailhost1.cac.washington.edu> From: "James W DeRoest" <deroest@cac.washington.edu> To: "AST Webpage" <astweb@u.washington.edu> Subject: Accounting project.... Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 14:04:38 -0700
-----Original Message----- From: Hugh Sheets <hugh@u.washington.edu> Date: Friday, October 24, 1997 1:21 PM Subject: Accounting project....
Jim DeRoest joined us to review a couple of issues. The namespace and accounting are two separate projects. The accounting is a process that will use the namespace. The primary work we have been doing so far with Shuksan is the namespace. The namespace project is high priority, with other groups needing this functionality, and there is a danger of fragmented parallel development taking place if we don't deliver something usable soon.
The namespace, in a nutshell, is the authorization data in Shuksan, and the authentication data in the Kerberos database. Authorization data is loaded into Shuksan and will need to propegate to the Kerberos database as Kerberos principals whether or not the customers will have UA accounts. This includes clients for adding, expiring, maintaining this data by a variety of managers, and support for querying the data (LDAP, maybe other methods). This also needs to be scalable to very large numbers of entries, many with no accounts on C&singC machines, with no direct affiliation with the UW, with subgroups managed by diverse managers responsible for only their subgroup. Thus, we will need to be able to flag customers as members of wide and varied groups, with varying authorizations in mind-boggling combinations.
Jim also stressed the importance of supporting NT. It is worth investigating whether the namespace project should be done on NT rather than UNIX to ensure NT will work. Tom will borrow Yonah's PC to upgrade to NT 5.0 and begin to examine NT in detail. Jim will try to massage the budget to bring in some more NT boxes, maybe even one to start. Zardoz is not running well since installing its NT disk, and staff would raise a fuss if we "appropriated" it.
Jim is setting up a larger namespace/LDAP meeting including the interested parties to try to form a consensus on who will be providing the data (us, it is hoped) and how that data will be accessed (LDAP?). A likely outcome of that meeting will be a smaller development group who will work on the namespace project.
Hugh will convene a meeting in early November to identify clients. We will invite target client users.
Tom is still having trouble connecting with anyone who can implement the direct transfer of hepps data to vitcos. Jim explained the programmer shortage in IS, but will try to talk to Mike Pingree. In the meantime, Tom will ftp data by hand from Austen as needed for development.
Tom may try to talk to Netscape through Jim's contacts about Netscape's LDAP.
Tom and Pete will work with Rob Christ and Bill Urich on the addid-type client they need for aagaard users. They want to assign usernames and passwords rather than allowing the customers to run new.
Pete has a new version of web-based renew, plus is moving the web-based new down to the next level of reviewers, having gone through the first level.
Jim Fox is now loading Li with the daily Shuksan-generated student data files instead of those Rhys is producing. No problems to report.
Task review: ------------ Tom: Database development, loading, processing. Faculty/Staff data loading, processing. Clinician data loading, processing, addid-type client. LDAP from Netscape. DB2 license for a test Informix replacement. Explore NT
Pete: Web-based new.
Tracy: Work on entire suite of clients.
Yonah: Writing a requirements document. Remove Carson, Max from current accounting system.
Hugh: Convene a client meeting.