CERN Accelerating science

EMDIR Stopped on September 16 1997

  G. Ferran, A. M. Osborne, S. Santiago IT/ASD,
  B. Pollermann IT/DCI

This news is an update of a previous early warning published in the Computer NewsLetter 226 (Jan-March 1997 - EMDIR Functionality Absorbed into CCDB).

On September 16, 1997, the EMDIR database has been removed and its data and funtionality absorbed into the Computer Centre DataBase (CCDB).

For nearly 10 years, the Electronic Mail Address Directory database (EMDIR) has been used to store electronic mail addresses - both for people at CERN and for other geographical populations. Due to the advent of the Web, the requirement to provide support to populations outside CERN no longer exists. Since 1987 the Computer Centre Database (CCDB) has been used to register users, their accounts and at the same time make entries into EMDIR. In order to consolidate the maintenance effort, EMDIR has been absorbed into CCDB on September 16. The effect of this will be the following:

• To register people for an e-mail address, Group Administrators of the relevant Computer Groups should continue to use 'xuserreg' - either to register new people or to modify the addresses of existing people.

• To modify (or enter for the first time) their own e-mail address, users with a graphics terminal, workstation or PC, may use 'xuserinfo' from one of their accounts on NICE, VXCERN, any PLUS service (HPPLUS, CERNSP, DXPLUS) or any workgroup server (e.g. ATLAS_WGS, CMS_WGS etc). On NICE, either 95 or NT, xuserinfo is available either from the CHANGE option in the PHONE BOOK, or directly from the START menu :

  ->'More Applications' -> 'System Configuration' -> 'xuserinfo'.
  

  Users with a `dumb' terminal may use 'cuserinfo' from one of their accounts on VXCERN, any PLUS service or any workgroup server.

• To look-up anyone's e-mail address, users should use (depending on the operating system), either:
  • on the Web the DIRECTORY (XWHO) service or,
  • on UNIX systems (PLUS services and WorkGroup Servers):
    • xwho (basically a line mode Web version)
    • phone with the `-M' option
    or,
  • on NICE the PHONE BOOK icon, or,
  • on VXCERN phoneb, which provides a similar functionality to that on UNIX.

Please note:

• Any change made to e-mail addresses (either the generic address or the preferred e-mail address) are seen via the directory services only the next morning, since, for efficiency reasons, they are based on database snapshots. For the purpose of e-mail routing, however, snapshots are taken five times per day - at regularly spaced intervals.
• The xuserreg, xuserinfo and cuserinfo interfaces provide more stringent validity tests than was the case for EMDIR.
• We are planning to introduce a Web interface for update of EMDIR addresses as soon as the problem of authentificating the user is solved - without requiring a special password.

For questions,	concerning:	contact:
	Web directory service or xwho	Bernd.Pollermann@cern.ch
	NICE phone book	Alberto.Pace@cern.ch
	phoneb on VXCERN	Tami.Kramer@cern.ch
	CCDB, xuserreg, xuserinfo or cuserinfo	Genevieve.Ferran@cern.ch