INFRASTRUCTURE & INFORMATION RESOURCES
February 1998
Status Report
YEAR OF HUMANITIES AND ARTS (YoHA) WEB SITE - project number 10732
The Year of Humanities and Arts (YoHA) is intended to be an ambitious, inclusive program involving the many schools, institutes, and programs that make up the University of Michigan. YoHA, which will take place throughout the 1997-98 academic year, is being sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR). Support for YoHA is coming in from many units and offices. Centrally, the Office of the President and Office of the Vice President for University Relations have already made major financial commitments to support YoHA.
http://www.yoha.umich.edu/
In general, updates and additions to the site continue to be made as new content is available or changes are desired. There is an ongoing effort to locate anomalies in the site and correct them.
Kendra Spiegel continues to work on the Scrapbook section of the site. Images have been scanned and layout work has begun.
YoHA was entered into several additional Web indexes and catalogs.
A request has been submitted to the UM-Gateway to include the YoHA events calendar on the main events page of the UM site.
The guestbook was found in a state of disarray due to some illegal coding entered by a guest. This has been fixed.
Current month server stats for YoHA are available at...
http://www.engin.umich.edu/cache/stats/org-YoHA.html
There is difficulty viewing the statistics. CAEN has been contacted.
(JW)
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN INSTRUCTIONAL ENVIRONMENT (UMIE) - project number 10594
A complete list of UMIE staff is available on our web site.
Further refinement of the CHPB design and functionality continued during this month. The specifications of the improvements, based on the input of the faculty advisory group and on the SI Student Evaluation report, were decided upon and work continues on this path. In addition to interface improvements, there has been great progress on the new flexible templates.
A first look at the partial completion of the revisions will beavailable for some evaluators of the product in late March. A partial rollout of the CHPB will be available in late April for Dentistry and Pharmacy.
Working cooperatively with the M-Pathways project, we were able to create the same table structures for the Course Catalog database as the M-Pathways Course module. Some of the current sample data was loaded to test its use. Work will commence in March on actually loading the LSA and Engineering course catalog information into the tables. The web interface to the catalog database was refined, based on the feedback from the OIT staff, and demonstrated for the faculty steering group. The timeline was revised, reviewed and accepted by those involved in the project. We hope to have the first prototype finished by mid-April.
The students from the School of Information had their first interviews with LS&A, Dentistry and School of Information. They are documenting the current workflow and recommending a sustainable process for keeping the UMIE course catalog up to date that works with the college workflow and can migrate to M-Pathways processes.
Roger continues to wrestle with the applet interface.His impression is that example code is not as useful as it's proven in the past. His plan is to use the Swing libraries to provide a consistent, decent interface across platforms. For the moment, the applet is being designed as both applet/application, to make testing simpler. Early experients with MSIE/MRJ on the Macintosh were distressing; running Swing under Nav4/NT with the JDK 1.1 patch was much more pleasing.
With the rollout of all 17 chapters of the quiz questions for this course, the UMIE involvement with this project is nearing completion. Aside from any maintenance issues that may arise, involvement will be reduced to just a few hours per month. There was an exam scheduled for last week and it was expected that the site would take a large number of hits. As of this writing there were 1200 sessions counted for the term. Evaluation data is being gathered.
The focus this month was on investigating the various venues/applications to use to generate the functionality of the web pages based on the new data model. Further modifications to the data model based on an object oriented approach may be in order. Hans Masing, Professor Dierker and Karen Yamada are working together.
The Faculty Steering Group met with the UMIE Core Team in February. In addition to getting an update on the status of the project and various infrastructure components, they discussed a variety of issues related to the project, in particular the need for a UMIE gateway that makes it clear how faculty can use the infrastructure in the administration and delivery of their courses.
At our next meeting, we will review a prototype of the gateway, discuss current status, and discuss the 1998-1999 project plans.
A group of students from the School of Information submitted their report on University Reserves and presented a copy to Ann Sprunger for her consideration.
Beta version 1.0b2 of the Course Home Page Builder is available.
|
Date |
Product |
|---|---|
|
Mar 1998 |
Reserves -- Pilot of Java applet for making reserve requests. |
|
Apr 1998 |
Course catalog -- Prototype with LS&A; data. Limited release of Course Home Page Builder to Dentistry/Pharmacy. |
|
Jun 1998 |
Course Home Page Builder 1.0 -- Production version. |
Zoe Gurevich has been developing a system to automate on-request creation of the PTS groups for classes. An instructor will fill out and submit the Class List Request Form via Secure Web server. Access to the Class List Request Form will be restricted to the U-M Faculty & Staff (PTS group university:employee). Upon successful submission, the instructor will receive an e-mail confirmation message stating that the requested PTS groups have been created. For a big class, the process of the PTS groups creation may take several minutes. The first version is ready for testing. Access is restricted to the PTS group umie:members.
Janani is working on a system to add security to custom built course home pages. For a first look, see her design notes.
The UMIE team has been meeting with representatives from and CRMs for several schools and colleges (Business, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, Medical School) to consider how the developing infrastructure can be linked to school systems. This will be a major initiative of the project for 1998-1999 in partnership with the Business School and others.
Mike Nowak also met with the Language Resource Center staff to provide a project update, collect information on LRC services to be included in the UMIE gateway, and to discuss collaborative projects.
Mike demonstrated UMIE services for University Library staff and
the M-Pathways Student Records and Curriculum team.
(MN)
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ON-LINE (UMOL) - project number 8064
Subscriber count, as of February 28:
| Subscription type | # subscribers | increase from January |
| Maize or Blue package | 1540 | +167 |
| Custom or campus subscribers | 760 | +99 |
| Total | 2300 | +266 |
Communication and Content:
Efforts are being focused to inform schools, colleges and appropriate units about the benefits UM Online. The emphasis is on how, with little or no effort on the part of the school, they can maintain contact with their alumni and alumni can easily stay in touch with the school. As part of this effort, UM Online brochures have been sent to 500 Alumni Club leaders. UM Online staff met with the ITD Customer Relationship Managers in preparation for meetings with school and college development and alumni staff. A presentation to the University wide Development Council is scheduled for early March.
A targeted email message was sent to December graduates encouraging them to subscribe to UM Online. The list used by the Targeted email service had incorrect student information; UM Online staff will follow up with the Registrars Office and the Targeted email service. Plans to promote UM Online to Spring graduates are being formulated. UM Online staff are currently scheduled to participate in the Union Fair and Alumni Association Senior Day. Other opportunities are being pursued. Brochures and letters informing matriculating students about UM Online will be made available to schools and colleges for inclusion in senior packets.
Information about continued computing services for retired faculty and staff through UM Online were submitted to HRAA. This information will be included in the pre-retirement publication sent upon request to all faculty and staff within 5 years of retirement, and also in the final benefit booklet handed to faculty and staff on the day they retire.
Material added to the UM Online web site in February included sixteen faculty and staff commentaries produced for WUOM, and an Alumni Association Think Fast lecture, "Clinton in Crisis". Modifications to the design and layout of the web site are in progress. They include the addition of side bar navigation at second level pages and the deployment of an online user manual.
During February, there were 255 general information email contacts with UM Online subscribers and potential subscribers.
Infrastructure and Technical:
The move from a stand-alone server to Web Services' distributed environment is in process. The move will be completed in mid-March. The recently deployed online application form has undergone enhancements in response to recommendations. The form --designed solely for use by individuals with uniqnames who are changing status, such as from a student to an alum-- has been used heavily by recent graduates.
The Alumni Association's Alumni PC sales program pilot (formerly known as Big Blue) continues to remain in the planning phase. As a result of the delays, the planned package offerings are stale, and new models are be evaluated. Owing to the delays, the appropriateness of continued participation in the pilot is being assessed.
Monthly statistics are available at http://www.umonline.umich.edu/stats/.
UM Online core team: Linda Green, Becky Spaly, Brian Vaughan, Ellen Vaughan
(project leader)
Web support: Scott George
Technical writing: Susan Topol
(EV)
Kevin Coffman attended the joint meeting of the BTJP group and the CIC Security Working Group (SWG). The two groups level-set with each other and agreed to continued communication. Another joint meeting is being planned for early June to discuss possible joint projects.
ICAAP/IMS/UMIE goal alignment is still being pursued.
BTJP - Big Ten Joint Project
CIC - Committee on Institutional Cooperation
ICAAP - InterCollegiate Authentication & Authorization Project
(KC)
CAMPUS WIDE DIGITAL LIBRARY PROGRAM
THE FEDERATION: DIGITAL LIBRARY PRODUCTION SERVICES - project number 10450
The Federation projects are funded by ITD, University Library and the Media Union. A list of staff is online at http://www.umdl.umich.edu/dlps/who.html.
| consultation with Bonn, Price-Wilkin | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The first re-indexing to incorporate changes happened over the | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| weekend of the 21st-23nd with mixed results. Some kinds of changes to the data appear to be ambiguous or beyond the expressivity of the current revision interface. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| and promises to be a fine addition t'th Force. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| with Chris and Maria about their roles generally, and on ideas | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| for the organization of the new Riverside. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| files, finding found problems of conformance to the DLPS specs (e.g., validity). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A report on problems was sent to Pitti. Rossetti implementation will continue in July. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dickinson project. The first phase (March) will be Web-implementation of | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| organization and display. The second phase, a "write-to-CDROM", will come in | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| November. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| astonishing work with MARC records and dumping them to | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| different kinds of SGML for a variety of purposes. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SGML Systems projects and staff, will be leaving the | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| organization. It has been a pleasure to work with Liz for the | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| last year and a half, and she will be sorely missed. |
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Coll. |
OCR |
Pretag |
Image |
Tagged |
Proofed |
Corr. |
Review |
Header |
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American Verse |
1 |
8 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
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CME |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
(JPW)
MUSEUM EDUCATIONAL SITE LICENSE (MESL) PROJECT - project number 10019
http://mesl.itd.umich.edu/
Wendy Lougee has established a discussion with Roger Bruce at George Eastman House about ongoing licensing of their content. John Weise and John Price-Wilkin will carry on the conversation.
MESL is largely in production mode.
MESL (https://mesl.itd.umich.edu) server stats for February 1, 1998 through February 28, 1998.
Program started at Tue-03-Mar-1998 09:14 local time. Analysed requests from Sun-01-Feb-1998 01:24 to Sat-28-Feb-1998 19:39 (27.8 days).
| Total completed requests | 2,676 |
| Total failed requests | 17 |
| Total bytes transferred | 15,227,951 |
Downtime for ezekiel.rs.itd.umich.edu -- 0
MESL ITD Team: John Weise, Zoe Gurevich, Katarina Lukaszewicz, Sandy Colombo
(JW)
CORE JOURNALS PROJECT - project number 10013/T0002
The Core Journals project is a partnership with UMI deploying around 1000 core journal titles in all disciplines in image format, linking them with Wilson Indexes in MIRLYN and putting in place the necessary structure for printing, accounting, and billing.
| FEBRUARY 1998 Core Journal Statistics | |
|---|---|
| Total Articles Requested | 5609 |
| Total Successful Prints | 5447 |
| Total Pages Printed | 29036 |
| Average Article size (pages) | 5.50 |
| Total Unsuccessful attempts | 215 |
Last Confer U downtime was on Jan 7, 1998 ( 5 minutes reboot).
| STATISTICS | ||||||
| Jan'97 | Nov'97 | Dec'97 | Jan'98 | Feb'98 | ||
| Active Conferences | 304 | 68 | 75 | 57 | 44 | |
| Total Participants | 11,310 | 6,660 | 6,733 | 6,837 | 2,300 | |
There are total of 137 COW conferences.
Some COW Statistics:
![[Your browser isn't displaying images]](http://www-personal.umich.edu/~zoe/cow02.gif)
Beginning March 8th at 11:59pm, there will be some COW downtime for a software upgrade. The system should be down for less than 15 minutes. The upgrade includes some minor and some fairly substantial changes.
We continue working with the Confer U class conference organizers in identifying the barriers that keeping them from switching to COW.
Confer U & COW Team: Dave Winkel, Doug Heavrin-Brown,
Linda Green, Scott George, and Zoe Gurevich.
(ZG)
WOLVERINE ACCESS - project number B9889
Software to upgrade AIX on the test server called Smasher was received and installed. We experienced some severe technical difficulties and needed to restore test applications from backups. We now have a test environment which mirrors the Wolverine Access production server "Spidy".
A mini FAQ is in progress which will contain the most common questions students ask the WA.team@umich.edu mailing list. The intent is to direct all students to the mini FAQ which will precede the primary FAQ. Only after the student has reviewed this information should they send messages to WA.Team. Answering student questions has been a very time-consuming task. We are adopting the Knowledge Base concept to improve response time and communication to the student population.
The
Wolverine Access Server Statistics are available
at http://www.umich.edu/~waccess/stats/
The list of error messages sent to the TOES team by the Office of the Registrar has been answered, with a few remaining to be resolved. A follow-up meeting to review outstanding issues and address enhancements is scheduled in early March.
The Web interface meeting scheduled in February was cancelled again by the customer. It has been rescheduled for late March. We expect to finalize this phase, which will provide access to the billing information to students, and determine if the project should continue with a second phase to offer search capability to the ITCom operators.
DATA ACCESS INFRASTRUCTURE - project number 10899
Two of the production GQL diagrams (FIN & DSD) have been converted to GQL411 and saved to their respective production database. The UmTell diagram is scheduled to move Feb. 13th. We have found that the new GQL411 diagrams can be moved to production and still provide access to lower level diagrams to the customer. Lower level diagrams will continue to be supported until April 6, the designated cut-over date. Support staff of the various GQL production diagrams are completing the process on target. We are still experiencing difficulty with calculated and derived date fields in the HR diagram and have been in contact with the product vendor, Andyn.
The customer is currently testing corrections made to the data load made last month. Updates to the data dictionary continues. Completion of this project is expected by the end of March.
Tuition Attribution module was loaded with test data this month and any outstanding issues with the diagram have been resolved. The customer office will begin testing mid-March.
Tables for the Cost Attribution model were
selected, and Source/Use tables were modeled, which completes the design.
Two meeting between Data Administration and the customer office are
scheduled in March to finalize the field names and data definition.
(MP)
The "Group E-mail Services" include REQ, LISTstar, Targeted E-mail, and Classlists.
Project Coordinator: Kari Gluski
REQ addresses the idea of a "Group Mailbox." This month current REQ users (group owners) were sent e-mail describing several options and prices for alternatives. They were asked to respond indicating their preferred option.
Option 1. ITD would provide a basic function group mailbox service which would be offered to University units. There would be a cost to the unit of $400 per year to set up and operate the mailbox. The underlying technology would be Lotus Notes, accessible via a web browser. EMC2 had been considered as an option but was determined to be infeasible.
Option 2. Those users who need specialized mail management and work flow functions not satisfied by the basic function group mailbox service can request that a customized group mailbox be developed to better meet their needs. The cost for this service will be based on the requirements for the mailbox. ITD will be happy to provide an estimate for the development work, which will be billed at the rate of $60 per hour.
Option 3. ITD can continue to provide the current service as it now exists in the pilot and will bill users based on actual costs. We anticipate that each user would be billed at approximately $1000 per year to continue with the same service they have utilized in 1997-98. NOTE -- This rate could change if the number of users changes in the coming year.
The ITD Accounts Office is the only group with a strong preference for continuing the current service. We received no answer from 80% of the 48 group owners contacted; of those who replied, 33% (3) asked to drop the service completely, 44% (4) preferred Option 1, and 22% (2, both Accounts Office) preferred Option 3.
Next Steps -- The target is still to have REQ shut down by July 1.
A message to group users to let them know proposed charging and price information has been prepared but not yet sent.
A group comprised of Chuck Lever, Gavin Eadie, Jim Sweeton, and Kari Gluski met to clarify service requirements. The goal is to switch software if that will make the service easier to operate cost-effectively. The group will prioritize requirements and meet again to identify a very small set of products to evaluate. They will also determine cost models for various platforms.
On February 6, Sandy Colombo facilitated a meeting to finalize rates and billing for the service.
On February 18, a message was sent to current targeted e-mail service users to let them know about upcoming charging and price changes and to provide interim policy information. There were no objections from the recipients. Doclib also have the text to give new requestors, and no objections were received.
The service will be a pilot user of the new Stats Service Network Queueing System, a batch job scheduling tool. This will allow DocLib staff to schedule jobs to run unattended at off-peak times.
Virginia Rezmierski has begun the process of getting feedback on policy needs in this area from the campus community.
Next Steps --
Mike Nowak obtained clarification from the Registrar's Office about privacy and policy issues related to class lists. He is also leading a group (described under UMIE) to develop consistent naming conventions for class list groups.
Next Steps -- Zoe Gurevich is working on the automated web tools to
process faculty requests for class lists.
(KG)
No report submitted.
(TV)
U-M GATEWAY - project number 10014
8 new entries were added in the Gateway catalog this month. Gateway email was approximately 15% greater than what we have been considering "average".
There was no downtime on the production servers this month, and only two minor outages in the pilot private webspace. Overall, traffic to the servers was down somewhat, but still averaged 1.4M hits/day.
Traffic/server statistics for February (see www.umich.edu/admin/ for details):
| Personal sites | 21,493,885 requests served | 413,390 Mbytes transferred |
| Departmental sites | 17,812,954 requests served | 86,763 Mbytes transferred |
We are in discussion with OIT about assuming administrative duties for their Mac-based Web servers. This would provide us with servers for those customers who require a Mac platform.
Web and DDS database folks met to pursue production database hosting through DSC. It's still not clear they can accommodate our technical requirements, but pricing appears to be fairly reasonable. We have compiled a memo outlining our concerns and will be forwarding that to DSC in early March. LS&A (Mike McPherson) is interested in similar support arrangements, so we are keeping him in the loop as we proceed.
Detailed information on production Web server configuration and statistics can be found at http://www.umich.edu/admin/.
| WEB Statistics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Month | #Requests | #bytes | #hosts |
| February '98 | 39,306,839 | 500,152,000,000 | 1,369,004 |
| January '98 | 44,224,703 | 564,978,000,000 | 1,421,379 |
| December '97 | 35,845,639 | 412,084,000,000 | 1,083,893 |
| November '97 | 40,298,091 | 443,271,000,000 | 1,263,023 |
| October '97 | 38,728,218 | 453,687,000,000 | 1,214,015 |
| September '97 | 32,966,652 | 379,847,000,000 | 989,069 |
| August '97 | 26,041,042 | 402,853,000,000 | 879,697 |
| July '97 | 23,809,743 | 336,930,000,000 | 840,724 |
| June '97 | 24,719,653 | 371,159,000,000 | 885,560 |
| May '97 | 25,344,926 | 451,719,000,000 | 987,880 |
| April '97 | 29,127,665 | 503,439,000,000 | 1,037,846 |
| March '97 | 28,982,975 | 526,444,000,000 | 1,023,042 |
| February '97 | 25,235,434 | 505,740,000,000 | 963,613 |
| January '97 | 31,910,670 | 543,198,000,000 | 1,008,447 |
| December '96 | 27,231,105 | 539,371,000,000 | 936,470 |
| November '96 | 27,148,553 | 557,387,000,000 | 975,816 |
| October '96 | 26,524,215 | 545,485,000,000 | 948,786 |
| September '96 | 19,600,827 | 382,286,000,000 | 734,210 |
| August '96 | 17,509,927 | 350,465,000,000 | 691,707 |
| July '96 | 16,958,757 | 327,815,168,000 | 681,536 |
(CK)
ITD TRAINING REGISTRATION SYSTEM - project number 9948
Cornelius implemented a minor enhancement that allows the system to internally charge differently for courses attended depending on staff/student affiliation to UM. Other enhancements are still in progress.
Cornelius has work underway to build an auotamated system to periodically update PRISM profiles using HR data from the mainframe. A plan of action has been presented to the customer and am awaiting for the go-ahead.
Work on the Oracle Text server has been halted momentarily awaiting the readiness of the new server. Cornelius worked on FORMS and GQL to implement some new enhancements that have been requested by the customer.
Hans and Kasthuri updated the printing and reporting facility for the Powerbuilder application. This allows the maintainers of the Regents Proceedings to get flexible and neatly-formatted reports from the database that they could not get before. This required an update of all three client machines, including a complete install of the PB Deployment Libraries on Nancy Asin's machine.
Hans and Kasturi continued to debug the problems with loading OS8 aand handled customers' workstation problems.
Gail and Ray reviewed the project with the customer, and developed a formal Test Plan for the application which includes adding all types of members, both new and renewals. The test will include membership, directory, labels, and reporting features.
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION (SOE) Project - project number A8166
No contact has been received from SOE to indicate the development required to complement the M-Pathways recruitment application.
Gail provided monthly maintenance support to handle an assortment of bugs.
Gail provided ongoing consulting and software pieces. Looking at ways to integrate separate parts of their study subject processes. Investigating software for the telephone screening process.
Gail made more changes to the system for the current term. Discussed ways to make installing changes less painful (the student lab is isolated, network-wise), and how to make changes to the way the system is "set up" for a term.
No work was completed on this project this month.
There are a number of completed projects which require some ongoing monthly maintenance --
(XXXXX - All required black borders have been submitted or appropriate invoice has been submitted)
B8998 - Urology Surgery Database Project
Constructed forms, re-created links and found more data problems. Assisted customer in cleansing the data. Finally, about half of the forms that they will need were created.
XXXXX - Business School Database
Pamela is working with Mark Fruin providing consulting services as requested. This service is billed by special means thru Matt Kelly.
B8804 - CCGC, Cancer Center Geriatric Center (Prostate Cancer Genetics Project)
Pamela and Ray constructed the required tables, made links, set up prototype forms, and retrieved sample data to use in DB development. Provided the customer with a demo of the work completed thus far.
8798 - Prostate/Pathology Database
Pamela and Ray began modelling data and analyzed related databases and the
data to determine how data will mesh.
(RUG)
| School of Nursing: Student Affairs, http://www.umich.edu/~nursing/students/; and International Network for Doctoral Education in Nursing, http://www.umich.edu/~inden/index.htm |
| Business School - Equity Project (#11304) |
Doug | They are moving their site to IFS hosting space. |
| Corporate & Foundation Relations (#10738) |
Melody, Jeremy | Continuing system updates per customer requests. |
| Dentistry: General (#11219) |
Scott | CRM (Ann Doyle) working with client to determine next steps. |
| Dentistry: Biologic & Materials
Sciences (#11187) |
Karen, Linda, Doug, Scott | Planning for additional work under way - met with client and department chair to gather feedback on current site. Work beginning on departmental Intranet and training of staff/faculty. Site will roll out in permanent IFS location in March. |
| Dentistry: Online Grades (#11341) |
Jeremy, Karen | Assessing possibility of providing Dentistry's grades online, from their proprietary system. |
| HRAA Professional
Development Calendar (#10756) |
Karen, Janani, Doug, Jeremy, Melody, Scott | Continuing development work on additional functionality and improvements requested by customer. Site at: http://www.profdevcal.umich.edu/ |
| Technology Management Office
(TMO) (#10816) |
Carol, Scott, Kevin | Completed this round of site changes. Working with their staff to get server administration back in line (this fell behind when Gordon Stewart left). Site at: http://www.tmo.umich.edu |
| School of Nursing, Intranet (#11333) |
Denise, Kevin | The architecture is laid out and Denise
is gathering information and putting it online. It's in
private space and nearly all the PTS groups are set up.
Kevin is implementing the Person-to-Person area, modeled
after the ITD Intranet. |
| School of Nursing, Undergraduate
Curriculum Revision (#11333) |
Denise | Set up a COW and several topics within the COW for the innovation teams. Even though this isn't really a web site project any more, the issue of COW in the SN has taken on a life of its own. We are trying to determine how to promote COW within the School, why people are unwilling to use it, and what type of training people need. Denise is providing some support for people who have difficulty using COW to try and see where some of the problems are. |
| Pathways Network (SoE) (#10766) |
Scott, Doug, Kevin | Kevin is helping get the SOE server stuff straightened out. Should all be finished this month. |
| Transportation Services (#tbd) |
Karen, Melody | Analysis work has begun. They have a staff person who may do some of the development work, but the exact nature of his role is unclear. |
| MSA - Advice Online (#11235) |
Bret | Next phase of data importing beginning. Some changes requested by client, especially to accommodate new data from Business School. |
| MSA - Online Voting (#10690) |
Dave, Kevin | Work underway for March election. |
| Health Services (#11364) |
Bret | Bret is assisting with their HTML development of a large document, converting from MS-Word into a Web-navigable structure. |
| MStores (#tbd) |
Jeremy | This project under auspices of Arlene Wolf/Martha Bhatia, but really a departmental system. Jeremy submitted proposal that was accepted by client. First pase of development work to be done by July 1. |
| MCIT, Kerberos (#11318) |
Jeremy | Assisting MCIT with Kerberos authentication on AIX server. |
| OVP Development (#11346) |
Jeremy | Developing Java application for reconciliation of bank statements and submission for DAC database update. |
| Business School (#11345) |
Kevin | Investigating server configuration, statistics logging, and site visit reporting alternatives. |
Web Services provides assistance on several ITD projects. Currently, we have staff working on the following:
| COW (#10017, #10047) |
Scott, Doug, Dave | Ongoing support, documentation work. |
| ITWeb (#10498) |
Melody | No news this month - Melody checking with Maureen P. on funding status. |
| ITD Software Licensing/Distribution (#10164) |
Karen, Doug | No progress this month. |
| UMIE (#10594, VCA: #10752) |
Karen, Bret, Jeremy, Melody, Scott | Continuing work on Course Home Page Builder (CPHB) - planning migration from PERL to Java. Melody working on Course Catalog database. |
| U-M Online (#08064) |
Scott | Recoded site for move to IFS. Added side bars to help navigation. Some RealAudio production. |
| Distributed Support Pilots | Carol, Scott | Met with Karen Dickinson to determine scope of Partnership/DSP efforts for School of Pharmacy (they are inter-related and inter-dependent). Scott beginning analysis of Pharmacy's current site. Karen working with Brenda Hill and Ann Doyle on funding determination. |
| X500/Slapd (#10622) |
Dave | Development of prototype Web interface to slapd protocol under way. |
| Business School | Met with Ctr. for International Business Education (CIBE) about hosting alternatives, and are following up on an inquiry from CEMP as well. |
| Health Media Research Lab | HMRL - Ed Saunders new job. We have met with them several times and are prepared to support their WebObjects server needs. |
| Dentistry - Online Grades | We have determined that the new version of Oracle may have the security components necessary to make this work, and are preparing a cost estimate for the customer. |
| ITD Equipment Inventory | No news back on funding for this project yet. |
January's WWW SIG group meeting was held on on 2/19. Mary Hill presented two Web-based applications in use at the Medical School, and Dave Winkel gave an introduction to the cookie-server method of Web login/Kerberos authentication in use by several groups. The next session is on 3/19.
Denise and Carol met o discuss updates/revisions to the Web Services web site. Denise has started to implement some of these revisions, and is also updating the Staff Picks weekly (usually). Edited/reformatted the how-to-homepage.
Product Support and Evaluation:
RealMedia - purchase is complete, and the new server is in testing. This server is available to campus groups for testing streaming broadcast applications. Contact Brian Vaughan for more information. We are working with Ellen Vaughan and Becky Spaly to determine how best to migrate the encoding service under Web Services for campus-wide availability.
WebObjects - this tool is being assessed for use on two projects: Transportation Services, and UMIE's course catalog, and also to support the needs of the Health Media Research Lab (HMRL - Ed Saunders). At first glance, the development environment is quite resource intensive (WInNT and min 64MB), and the server requires several MB of RAM per application, which could impact server load. Several team members will attend the upcoming training class.
Java - Bret and Jeremy will attend JavaOne in March and present information about their experience at an upcoming WWWSIG meeting.
Hans has documented his CGI libraries for common use. Documenton can be found online at: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hmasing/web_architecture/
Dave is working with a computing support staff member at the
Business School to port the Web authentication cookie server code
to Windows NT. This will be useful to many folks around campus.
(CK)
The Groupware and LAN/NOS services are now working together. A business plan outlining services is in preparation. Mary Pearce has taken on leadership of the business part of the services.
Continuing work with ITD Software Licensing on new Novell site license. The contract is expected to be for a term of 4 years. NetWare OS, basic GroupWise and basic ManageWise will be included. More details will be available after the contract is signed.
New versions of Novell Directory Services are currently being deployed across campus. Approximately 70% of the 300 servers have been upgraded by local administrators.
A fourth, root level, NDS server has been added to the Michigan Tree to improve performance problem experienced by the Medical Center.
We are now working with NetWare version 5, beta 2 in a test environment. The migration to NetWare v5 will provide several challenges as Novell adopts TCP/IP as the primary protocol for all Novell services. Other enhancements include a new file system, printing architecture, and desktop management services.
The major work in this area was a reorganization of the file system for the ITD-Staff server. The volumes on the Staff server were reorganized to better distribute load and to accommodate data being migrated from Banyan VINES to NetWare.
An additional file server has been added to the server pool to meet increasing demand.
We continue to enhance the quality of our production backup service. We are now investigating the options for consolidating all backup services on a Windows NT host running Seagate Backup Exec. By moving services to NT, we will have a single backup server to cover our NT and NetWare file servers. An additional DLT drive will be added to the tape changer to manage the additional load.
We continue to work with OM/Facilities to decommission Banyan VINES in ITD. Several Banyan servers have been shut down in the past month.
We are continuing work with NT version 5 Beta 1. Given the limited stability of this release, we are anxious to get Beta 2. Unfortunately, NT v5 continues to be delayed and is no longer expected to ship in the 1998 calendar year.
We are participating in the Microsoft Exchange Pilot along with LS&A, ISR, ENG, and BSAD. Will be deploying a pilot Exchange environment in ITD, focusing on usability and UMCE (directory) integration.
We are beginning to work with other ITD project areas to help deploy and
support application services running on Windows NT. These project area
include Lotus Notes / Groupware, the CRS knowledge base service, and an
IT-Com video server.
(ML)
All technical problems have been resolved. The service is running smoothly.
(CB,WC)
IMAP -- The test server is up and in limited testing. Our current concentration is on verifying use of existing clients.
Mail500/SMTP -- Since installing our "UMich.EDU" mail filters, the amount
of bounced mail has dropped to about 25% of peak input. We're still
working with certain departments to eliminate our major source of
email-loops, e.g. ccmail.bus.
(WC)
No report submitted.
(AI,BV)
IDENTIFICATION, AUTHENTICATION, AND AUTHORIZATION (IAA) - Project 10618
The UMCE IAA service is responsible for the UMCE uniqname service, UMICH.EDU Kerberos authentication service, and UMCE protection group (authorization) service. The Kerberos database contains ids and passwords for over 170,000 users.
The effort continued to eliminate vulnerable computer passwords, part of an ongoing campaign to increase security of U-M's computer networks and data. We are assisting the ITD Office of Policy Development and Education by checking passwords for the UMICH.EDU Kerberos cell. These are the passwords that most U-M faculty, students, and staff use to access their email, use for dialin access, and use to access IFS files. During winter term, passwords are being checked and passwords that can be recognized by a dictionary check are identified. Owners of these passwords are being asked to please change their password. During February, faculty and staff members with recognizable passwords were asked to please change their password to a better password. During March, notifications will be sent to students with recognizable passwords. The Kerberos server has been changed to not accept easily-guessable passwords when passwords are changed.
Currently the UMICH.EDU Kerberos server only supports Kerberos Version 4 applications. In order to support Kerberos Version 5 applications, such as Oracle, we have started a project to migrate the Kerberos server to one that will support both Kerberos Version 4 and Version 5 applications. During February we made progress on fixing the database replication of the MIT Kerberos Version 5 server. CITI is investigating migrating their AFS cell to the Kerberos Version 5 server.
We have been having performance problems (slow file access,
slow logins, etc.) during periods of peak usage. We have made some
software changes to improve performance, and we are going to upgrade
several of our server machines to faster processors as soon as
possible. The new hardware is being tested and the production IAA
services will be migrated to the new machines as soon as testing
is completed.
(MG)
The Institutional File Service (IFS) provides a distributed file system based on Transarc's Andrew File System (AFS). Students, faculty, and staff store files in IFS home directories. There are currently over 84,000 IFS home directories and the IFS stores over 390 billion bytes of data.
The IFS team is migrating the eighteen AFS file servers to the latest
version (3.4a) of Transarc's AFS software and to the latest version (4.2)
of the AIX operating system.
(MG)
Documentation of the ABS system is in progress. A balance control
check procedure is being implemented.
(BD)
ONLINE DIRECTORY SERVICE - project number 10082
The purpose of the Online Directory Services team is
to further the mission of U-M's Information Technology Division
by deploying a set of high performance, large-scale, standards-based
on-line directories that integrate various technologies and
University business processes into services that are relevant
to campus computing users.
Delivering accurate directory information to its users on a timely basis is the fundamental mission of a good directory service.
Members of the Online Directory Team continue to work with the Office of Development to plan the implementation of an online Alumni directory service. A meeting to review Alumni directory technical and business requirements is scheduled for early March.
Work on a CGI-based LDAP client has been contracted to the Departmental Information Systems team (formerly known as Web Services). A prototype that demonstrates technical feasibility should be available by mid March.
Discussions about directory content and organization continue. Directory content is determined by what data we receive from the SCDB and other UIS-maintained databases, so we are developing some data models to discover better ways of managing and updating the directory data from administrative databases. We are focusing on re-implementing our regular batch update process to allow us to run it without putting the directory into read-only mode, and to begin expiring entries again.
We are testing a logging system that records vital statistics about requests that run too long so we can track down those problems and eliminate them. Work has also begun on tracking reliability, and on improving our service monitoring systems.
Replication continues to be a significant and noticable problem. We plan to move very large directory groups onto a mailing list server in order to reduce the impact of the replication disruptions that modifications to these groups cause. We are also working with the Accounts Office on improving the ability of their account creation and management tools to survive directory problems.
Because the Netscape Directory Server is a direct descendant of the U-M LDAP reference implementation, information gathered using these three sample servers can apply directly to a deployment of the Netscape server software.
Howard Young has completed a prototype implementation of a Kerberos 4 plug-in for the Netscape Directory Server. We intend to review and test the plug-in, then turn it over to Netscape for "productization" and inclusion in future releases of the Netscape Directory Server.
E-mail: dirsvcs@umich.edu
(EV,CL)
GENERAL PURPOSE COMPUTING CYCLES
The main purpose of the GPCC team is to further the mission of U-M's Information Technology Division by developing and deploying a group of high-quality, large-scale, high-performance computing solutions (including appropriate infrastructure).
General Information:
Collaboration efforts are continuing with the Departmental Information Services team, the IFS team, the Online Directory Services team, and CITI. These efforts include work on campus on-line directory efforts, umich.edu cell Kerberos 5 migration, the targeted e-mail service, and support for databases on departmental servers. Pilot efforts with ITD Contract Services are continuing. New collaboration with other UM database administrators and database developers is also starting, and collaboration with CSCAR is reviving and being reshaped.
February saw several significant personnel changes for our team. We said good-bye to long-time staffer Doug Song this month, as he heads into an industry position outside the University. We wish him the very best of luck. Lee Pearson, of the CRM team has been offered a position to assume many of Doug's responsibilities. Lee will focus on several of the security related projects that Doug has been overseeing for the past two years. Lee adds years of Unix and security experience to our team, and will be a welcome addition.
We've brought a new system administrator, Airyn Darling, on board to provide operational support for our production Login and Statistics services. Airyn will work in conjunction with our team and operational support services provided by PD&D to provide for the specific operational needs of our services. Welcome, Airyn!
ITD LOGIN SERVICE (Project 10001)
Usage:
The IFS password file now contains more than 84,461 entries; the password file is almost six and a half megabytes in size. The ITD Login service has 78,222 subscribers, up by 0.6 percent from last month. On weekdays, our pool of 16 login machines supports an average of 2,300-2,400 concurrent users between the hours of 10AM and 5 PM, often peaking at over 2,500 users. Usage continues to grow.
New Features:
No new features to report this month.
Technical Achievements:
Because of ongoing problems with spam e-mail (large amounts of unwanted email), one of our electronic mail servers was placed on an Internet-wide blacklist, preventing our users from sending mail to off-campus recipients. We've worked very hard to reduce the risk of Spam through our servers so that they could be removed from the blacklist. The blacklist administrators were very co-operative. We are continuing to review our electronic mail configuration to further reduce the risk of spam being delivered through our systems.
ITD STATISTICS AND COMPUTATION SERVICE (Project 10006)
Usage:
The ITD Statistics and Computation service has 1,173 subscribers, up 45 subscribers (3.8 percent) since last month. During the day, as many as 25 concurrent users run everything from SAS and SPSS to Pine and home-grown Fortran programs on our Ultra 2300. Targeted e-mail customers also make use of the service to deliver bulk electronic mailings. The list of software available on the service is available at http://kiosk.itd.umich.edu/software.
New Features:
Work continues on our batch processing subsystem and alternate local home directory support on the main Statistics server, poleposition.rs.itd.umich.edu. MATLAB and Mathematica licenses were renewed, and LISREL was installed. Due to technical difficulties, LISREL is still not functioning and ITD administrators are working with the LISREL vendor (SSI) to resolve the problem.
Technical Achievements:
See ITD Login Service and New Features above.
Workstations at NUBS and Angell Courtyard Computing Resource Sites:
GPCC supports 10 high-powered UNIX workstations around campus for the subscribers of the ITD Statistics and Computation Service. These workstations have the same applications available locally on them as are available on the Statistics and Computation Service. The intended purpose of these workstations is to provide a graphical-capable interface to powerful UNIX computing resources. There are 6 Sun Ultras at NUBS and 3 at Angell Courtyard (specifically, they are Ultra 1-170s), and 1 Ultra at CSCAR (Ultra 1-140). We record an average of 55 users logging in to each machine per day.
ITD POWERADMIN SERVICE (Project 10828)
Usage:
This pilot service now supports 92 machines (including the Login Service and Statistics and Computation Service machines).
New Features:
Our training sessions for administrators from ITD Contract Services, UMCE operations, and the School of Information were completed this month. Several opportunities already exist to work with Contract Services to provide administrative support at a departmental site.
Billing for the PowerAdmin service is beeing handled through a process established by Matt Kelley, PD&D business manager. Client charges will be included in Financial Opperations standard monthly Service Unit Billing statements.
Technical Achievements:
Work has begun on creating a Solaris 2.6 template.
Support for the latest version of AFS, netatalk, and the U-M LDAP reference implementation was added to the Solaris 2.5.1 template in February.
E-mail: itd-login-admin@umich.edu
(EV)
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