🚀 go-pugleaf

gopher@extro.ucc.su.oz.au (John McQueen) writes:
>I guess these questions are directed to all those DSA managers out there.
>How serious are you about running quipu?

Very. Having shifted from a department-pays-for-use system of networked
and central computing resource usage to centrally funded "the network
is infrastructure" models we badly need to get on top of a general
information management problem. QUIPU fits the midterm bill well 
as an (albiet researchy but...) sufficiently robust version of something
that we can point to and say to the infidels of management

	"look what we got to try and fix our problems"

and other good noises. We'll stick with it until something better
comes along, and I dont see anything looming on the horizon yet!

>I know George Michaelson at the University of Queensland (Australia)
>seems to have the entire payroll of the university loaded up.

This is a bootstrapping exercise. getting enough data online quickly
to justify further funding is a pain! Adding nicer info into this framework
is taking time, primarily phonelists and /etc/passwd type info. I hoped
to get some campus-context specific oid stuff together but I am very 
nervous of departing from globally meaningfull information models, and
would LOVE to see what other people consider "useful" information types.
One that springs to mind for us is:

	mapReference :gridlocation a la A-Z guide or numbered building map

Since we want to see this used for more general "whois <x> and how do
I find her" searches eg from S.U. refectory & library installed terminals.

>Here at Sydney University we are a bit unsure as to how far to go with
>it. Whether to suggest to the admin people they use it for maintaining
>their phone book, or just let things go along and let our data go slowly
>out of date.

I am VERY nervous of taking so long that the data becomes stale. I'd figure
anything that lags more than 3 months on the real world is getting dangerously
old especially with the new PABX coming in (lotsa phone number changes)

It is VERY tempting to "sell" QUIPU to mgt as the answer to their
prayers, but when facing somebody(somecommittee?) that just spent $x000
on ORACLE or some other DB for MIS applications It can get a bit
embarrassing. 

I personally DO want to try and get QUIPU wedded into the general staff 
appointements process (so that you are online from day #1 of your working 
(students comes later I suspect) life at UQ, if you use email or not) 
but I think I'm going to be moving a bit slowly towards this.  

I'd like to demonstrate an ability to handle plausibly complex information 
before I commit and I mean "manage" at the human level, I don't doubt QUIPU 
is up to it. 


Security of personal data looms large as a user-specified worry. Its one
thing to choose to have your mugshot stored online, but getting it
done by default scares the hell out of me. Ditto home address/phone info
(yes its in the phonebook but you can't do fast context-sensitive searches
through there unless VERY committed to chasing my (paranoid) tail)

>My personal thoughts are that if we are going to do this then me may
>as well do it properly, and each organization make some sort of 
>commitment in money/manpower to maintaining an uptodate complete
>directory.

Definitely. The exact level of funding is hard to pin down though...
initial h/w costs locally we fudged by getting a good "porting"
discount (thanks guys) but labour will FAR outweigh this if you add up:

	1+ Database Manager
	1 data entry team
	secretarial staff
	committee to manage above and integrate into general admin
	re-print stationary

as longterm costs. You have to sell an increase in functionality rather
than definite savings I think... well you can suggest email based comms
is cheaper than paper, but the directory is only 1 facet of that argument.
Its trying to sell MHS/networks WITHOUT a directory that doesnt make sense
the all look to the net as a phone-like system and expect a directory
to co-exist with the comms packages from day 1 (and I dont blame them!
we must be crazy to accept a global net with no directory!)

...Not to mention help/docco/porting and fending off people who want you
to run <xyz> product instead... (sigh)


I did a report for the Qld state government computer centre on directory 
and naming issues in their network. I did a pretty cack-handed job of it,
but one solid thing came out of it for me:

	You are walking on a LOT of sensitive feet when you try and
	structure a namespace and manage it longterm. Selling a specific
	package or system is not nearly as important as selling the IDEA
	of a managed namespace for ALL communications (you can interpret
	managed in any way you see fit including deliberate anarchy) and
	you are looking at a small to medium sized department which has to
	exist longterm for any body of more than trivial size. 

I personally favour taking QUIPU as a starting point and generating a
good enough demonstrator to hand it over to somebody else for integration
into the local system. I suspect I wind up selling my own org within the
university as the body to manage it since nobody else is likely to take
it seriously. The phone-net and even campus video people are already being
softened for takeover by the campus computing body so this probably makes
sense longterm.
	
If we wind up using some mix of Kerberos-like and QUIPU for Information
access and access control I'll be pretty happy. If we wind up with one
single mechanism for both I'll be deliriously happy. 

Wanted:

	Cheap/free PC/MAC --->integrated<--- X.400 and X.500 tool. We 
	already have  back-ends for these. we need the user interface.

	Should preferably mask underlying server architecture (unix vs VMS)


-George
	G.Michaelson
Internet: G.Michaelson@cc.uq.oz.au                     Phone: +61 7 377 4079
  Postal: George Michaelson, Prentice Computer Centre
          The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD Australia 4067.