🚀 go-pugleaf

	At the MCC (Manchester Computing Centre) we provide a range of centralised
computing services for the Manchester universities. (There are also quite a number
of systems on the LAN which we dont manage). In the dim and distant past things 
were simple and as each new system came along, (every few years) we produced a
piece of software to register users on the system and interface it to the accounting
software written for that system. We now have a number of different databases and
forms for users to fill in when they want to use our systems.

	We are therefore now in a process of reviewing our procedures to try and 
achieve a single easy to use unified system! We know that other sites have been
down this path before and would therefore be grateful to receive any experiences
and any documents people may have available, suggesting ways in which this could 
be achieved.

	We are currently negotiating with the registrar's departments of the 
Universities to gain access to data from the student and staff records to identify
all potential local users. This needs to be tied into existing systems which are
MVS, VM/CMS, Unix (assorted flavours) and Novell systems.  We also want to end
up with an extensible system which can be readily adapted to new systems as they
come along. To this extent we feel the need to define a registration API to
actually implement what the working parties (2 after the first meeting!) decide.
 
	I would be most grateful to receive any ideas, suggestions etc. 
particularly anything from other large organisations.

     Thanks,
           Phil
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| Phil Stringer, Mainframe Systems  | Phone 061 275 6057                      |
| Manchester Computing Centre       | Fax   061 275 6040                      |
| University of Manchester          | email zzassps@uts.mcc.ac.uk             |