IRAP January 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.
Layout problems in the Course Community section of the site were corrected. This was a large job since there are so many pages in that section.
Kendra Spiegel is working with Lee Katterman to revamp and expand the Scrapbook section of the YoHA site.
Kendra is consulting with Matt Stoeffler to learn about video digitizing. Lee would like to add more video to the site.
Mike Miller generously agreed to increase YoHA's file space allotment to 55 MB.
Kendra Spiegel transferred the YoHA site to CDROM. This provides a snapshot in time of the site, a backup copy, and local storage device for demos when the network is not accessible. John Weise made a few copies of the CD for Lee Katterman and Julie Ellison.
Current month server stats for YoHA are available at...
http://www.engin.umich.edu/cache/stats/org-YoHA.html
...and are summarized below.
Program started at Fri-Jan-30-1998 05:34 local time.
Analyzed requests from Thu-Jan-01-1998 01:45 to Thu-Jan-29-1998 23:30 (28.9
days).
| Total successful requests | 3,702 |
| Average successful requests per day | 128 |
| Total failed requests | 270 |
| Number of distinct files requested | 214 |
| Number of distinct hosts served | 370 |
(JW)
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN INSTRUCTIONAL ENVIRONMENT (UMIE) - project number 10594
A complete list of UMIE staff is available on our web site.
The Course Home Page Builder team met extensively during January to examine and prioritize the recommendations made by the SI students who evaluated the CHPB during the Fall 1997 term. Some of those recommendations will be implemented in the CHPB version 2, which we expect to roll out in April. Some minor work continued on refining the security scheme we implemented for the CHPB which allows the faculty member to select public, U-M restricted, or class-restricted access.
The Course Catalog team has met with representatives from Engineering, the Business School, OIT staff,and the LSA Academic Peer Advisor administration to gather their input on the course catalog web interfac, and they have begin to make the necessary modifications to the prototype. Plans are in the works to have a number of students affiliated with the LSA Academic Peer Advisors provide feedback on the interface as well.
We are also working on obtaining the scripts used by People Soft to create the course data submodule of the MPathways project. We expect to use these script to create our own development version of the MPathways tables to more seamlessly interface the two projects once MPathways comes online.
A group of students from the School of Information from the course on the Design and Management of Information Systems will be consulting with the course catalog team this semester as a class project.
Roger started working on the Java version of the project, based on the prototype developed using CGI scripts. Roger has begun testing the software using the Macintosh Runtime for Java (MRJ) 2.0, which " finally makes Java useful on the Mac."
Roger is reviewing the design with the library for functionality and compatibility. The new interface collects more information to make items more efficient to process, but we need to fold this data into the existing process.
Students in two psychology classes are currently testing electronic reserves materials stored in private web spoace on IFS.
6 faculty from the English Composition Board (ECB) are using the Notes-based prototype developed last term. Gonzalo Silverio is meeting periodically with faculty to discuss online learning, using the ECB Notebook, and so on. Based on Gonzalo's observations, students seem to find the tool very useful for their class work.
All seventeen quizzes in web.framework have been published and have been made available to the 400 students in the Anthropology 161 class. For now, all quizzes are linked from the course home page that was developed with CHPB. The team is looking forward to using the improved version of Course Home Page Builder.
Hans Masing and Karen Yamada met with Professor Dierker in early Januaryt o revise the timeline for the project this term, review the latest changes to the physical data model for the last module related to coursework and tracking students' session information, and hear Steve's status on modifying the JavaScript code to work with the new database structure. Steve's efforts to work on the code has been hampered this month by the workload from the start of a new term. We are meeting again in mid-February to review our status to date. In the meantime, Hans will work on getting the code to get the Scantron data loaded into the database seamlessly. Karen will work on getting Steve some help with object-oriented modeling.
In the meantime, Steve's original version of VCA is running for this term. We hope to transition the website to the new database by mid-sememster.
The UMIE Faculty Steering Team is a subgroup of the Academic Computing Advisor Committee. The Steering Team members are:
Another member from Engineering is also being added. The faculty steering team will meet with the UMIE core group on Feb 18.
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 |
|---|---|
|
Feb 1998 |
Reserves: Pilot of Java applet for making reserve requests. |
|
Mar 1998 |
Course catalog: Prototype with LS&A; data |
|
Apr 1998 |
Course Home Page Builder 1.0: Production version. |
A team headed by Kari Gluski is working on automation of the class list process. One important feature of the new process will be that we will be able to generate class pts groups in response to a web form. In addition, we are preparing a proposal for a common naming convention for class mailing lists, PTS groups, conferences, and course home pages. A proposal will go to stakeholders (faculty, students, as well as IFS, Registrar, and COW staff) shortly.
UMIE staff have met or had discussions with staff and faculty in
the Business School, Medical School, School of Dentistry, College of
Pharmacy, and Kinesiology over the last month. In conjunction with
existing ITD partnerships, we hope to get support and to create
relationships with these and other campus stakeholders.
(MN)
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ON-LINE (UMOL) - project number 8064
Subscriber count, as of January 31:
| Subscription type | # subscribers | increase from December |
| Maize or Blue package | 1373 | +30 |
| Custom or campus subscribers | 661 | +23 |
| Total | 2034 | +53 |
There were 79 new subscribers in January, but with churn, the net increase over December is 53.
Communication and Content:
Hard copy version of the redesigned UM Online User Guide is being produced in short runs. The printed version of the guide is intentionally generic -- enough information to get subscribers to the detail available on the web. This is in keeping with efforts to lengthen the shelf life of print materials. Comprehensive product-specific information is available via the web. The explosion of web knowledge within the US popular culture over the past two years has changed the level of base web knowledge we need to provide to new subscribers. In response to this cultural shift, we are again reviewing and evaluating the material provided to subscribers.
In response to the January changes to the basic computing offerings for the campus community, the packaging of the UM Online service is being simplified. Toward this end, the dial-in prices and time/rate structures have been modified to reflect changes in the campus dial-in service. The planned packaging change (a single offering) will allow us to simplify the presentation of the service in promotional material. The package rate will be reviewed and adjustments, if any, will be done in concert with UMCE price adjustments at the start of the next ficial year. Current plans call for developing promotional material without price information. This approach will increase the shelf life of the material and allow production to proceed independently of the rate review cycle.
Web site work during January included enhancements and deployment of general subscriber information. We continue to add RealAudio material from WUOM and the Alumni Association.
Opportunities to work with (or link to) campus information providers continue to be pursued by UM Online staff members.
In an effort to learn more about each other's service, UM Online staff members met with the managing editor and market manager of Michigan Live, an online division of Advance Publications, owner of 26 newspapers (including the Ann Arbor News), Conde Nast magazines, Parade, React, Random House, and 10 online services.
During January , there were 109 general information email contacts with UM Online subscribers and potential subscribers.
Infrastructure and Technical:
In an effort to simplify procedures for recent grads to join UM Online, an online application form has been deployed. Since the audience for the form have uniqnames/kerberos passwords, the application is presented on a secure web form (authentication is done with Secure Socket Layer, SSL). The online application interfaces with the Accounts Office subscriber / credit card Oracle data base. The actual subscription procedure remains the same -- Account Office staff create subscriptions.
As another outcome of the January changes to the campus offering, the campus community will have access to the UM Online web site. In order to provide campus access, access control (pts group) changes are needed. Current plans call for UM Online changes to be done in conjunction with a UMCE Identification, Authentication and Authorization (IAA) initiative -- a review and refinement of the pts group, university:members.
The Alumni Association's Alumni PC sales program pilot (formerly known as Big Blue) remains in the planning phase. A change of staff assigned to the project at the fulfillment house (CDW) along with recent news -- the program can not use the phrase Big Blue -- have delayed the rollout of the program. Given the delays the package pricing may need to be re-evaluated.
The planned migration of the UM Online web site move from a stand-alone server to a Web Services server has been delayed. Completion is expected in early February.
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)
Attempts are being made to align the goals of this project with those of the U-M IMS commitment and the UMIE project.
Additional staff support is needed. Funding is a concern that should be resolved this month.
BTJP - Big Ten Joint Project
CIC - Committee on Institutional Cooperation
ICAAP - InterCollegiate Authentication & Authorization Project
(BR)
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.
Despite being devastated by the flu, other ailments, jury duty, and travel, January was another successful month. Bright spots included Alan Pagliere accepting the position as DLPS SGML Technologist, our work putting the Bibliography of Asian Studies online, the first internal unveiling of the DLPS Image Services interface, a vast amount of data loading for PEAK, and production advances in the MEC project. On examination of the latter, it became clear that we should have no problem converting Middle English Dictionary fascicles at a rate that will allow us to complete all work within the grant-funded period. Data on usage and collection sizes is available at http://www.umdl.umich.edu/dlps/stats/9801.html.
New and developing resources
|
Coll. |
OCR |
Pretag |
Image |
Tagged |
Proofed |
Corr. |
Review |
Header |
|
American Verse |
4 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
3 |
1 |
4 |
0 |
|
CME |
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
2 |
|
Other
Miscellaneous
"P" File Rec'd Pages Sample pp. Errors/action --------------------------------------------------------------- 924-001C 12/11 713-812 738,41,54,61,66 4/reject file 924-001D 12/15 813-912 814,16,46,87,902 0/accept file 924-001Cv2 12/23 713-812 738,42,54,78,81 1/accept file 924-001A 12/29 513-612 526,63,69,608,09 3/accept file 924-001F 12/30 1013-1112 1067,72,75,95,1110 4/reject file 924-001G 12/30 1113-1212 1118,21,22,32,75 0/accept file 924-001H 1/6 1213-1312 1218,51,76,79,96 1/accept file 924-001B 1/9 613-712 627,37,50,78,88 0/accept file 924-001E 1/12 913-1012 937,39,68,72,86 1/accept file 924-001I 1/19 1313-1412 1343,51,82,88,1403 0/accept file 924-001J 1/19 1413-1512 1445,56,63,72,75 0/accept file 924-001Fv2 1/23 1013-1112 1027,40,53,66,1104 0/accept file 924-001K 1/23 1514-1540 1518,20,R622,S(2)129 0/accept file "R/S" File Rec'd --------------------------------------------------------------- 924-001K 1/23 R-547,622 [see above] [see above] S-various 924-001L 1/26 S-various 259,346,348,587, 1 error made; 597,613 1 error fixed /accept file
MUSEUM EDUCATIONAL SITE LICENSE (MESL) PROJECT - project number 10019
http://mesl.itd.umich.edu/
Work is underway to seek extended licensing of MESL content beyond the end of the pilot (June 1998). The potential to aquire additional content from the museums will be investigated as well. If extended use of the content is secured, then the MESL access system will be migrated to Digital Library Production Services, Image Services.
MESL is largely in production mode.
MESL (https://mesl.itd.umich.edu) server stats for January 1, 1998 through January 30, 1998.
Program started at Fri-30-Jan-1998 12:51 local time.
Analysed requests from Thu-01-Jan-1998 10:03 to Fri-30-Jan-1998 11:12 (29.0
days).
| Total completed requests | 3,474 |
| Total failed requests | 0 |
| Total bytes transferred | 45,668,840 |
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.
| January 1998 Core Journal Statistics | |
|---|---|
| Total Articles Requested | 2727 |
| Total Successful Prints | 2688 |
| Total Pages Printed | 16895 |
| Average Article size (pages) | 6.29 |
| Total Unsuccessful attempts | 39 |
The Confer U production service:
The Confer U production service continue to operate without problems.
| STATISTICS | |||
| Nov'97 | Dec'97 | Jan'98 | |
| Total Conferences | 81 | 75 | 62 |
| Active Conferences (active Winter 1998) | 68 | 75 | 57 |
| Dormant Conferences (ongoing with no activity) | 13 | 0 | 5 |
| Total Participants | 6660 | 6733 | 6837 |
Migration to COW (pilot project):
There are total of 132 COW conferences.
Some COW Statistics --
![[Your browser isn't displaying images]](http://www-personal.umich.edu/~zoe/cowplot.gif)
In January we made some small changes and additions to the code. Some of the additions exist only in the COW development environment. The next COW "upgrade" will occur during the Spring break. The documentation revision is very close to completion.
We continue working with the Confer U class conference organizers to identify the barriers that keep 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 9889
Software was ordered to upgrade the test server called Smasher which will mirror the Wolverine Access production server "Spidy". The upgrade from IBM was free and is expected to be completed by mid-March. The WA technical lead is working with OM to insure compatibility when we develop code and move new projects to production. This has been a problem in the past which we are correcting.
The
Wolverine Access Server Statistics are available
at http://www.umich.edu/~waccess/stats/
(MP)
A list of error messages that appear when processing transcripts was sent to the TOES team by the contact from the Office of the Registrar. The team has provided some answers and are working on the remainder. The system is performing well, considering this is the heavy period of transcript ordering.
A follow-up meeting was requested by John Gohsman to review outstanding issues and address any enhancements that may be required to improve functionality. This meeting will occur in late February.
January Statistics for TOES Orders:
| RO | 3,335 | 48% |
| WEB | 3,634 | 52% |
| Total | 6,969 |
Total TOES Orders for 10 Months:
| RO | 35,314 | 66% |
| WEB | 18,546 | 34% |
| Total | 53,864 |
(MP)
The Web interface meeting scheduled in mid-January was cancelled by the customer for reasons of illness. It is rescheduled for mid-February.
We expect to finalize the first 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.
(MP)
DATA ACCESS INFRASTRUCTURE - project number 10899
Support staff of the various GQL production diagrams met with
Administrative support personnel to review the project timeline and
discuss issues concerning the upgrade of the diagram. Adequate testing
time was a concern for some because of other responsibilities they
have. This will be a team effort and where necessary, other experience
ITD GQL testers will become involved to insure that we meet our
deadlines. Administrative Support set up four workstations in their
common area which provides the different platforms for testing. A
special folder to save the converted diagrams was created in IFS and
accessible only by ITD staff. Our plan is to migrate the PTS diagram
first which should flush out any problems we have not already
encountered. A meeting between Administrative Support, Data Access
Project leader, Data Base Administration and Facilities is scheduled for
February to outline a plan.
(MP)
A modification was made to the program which creates the cross-listed data based on the customers testing and reviewing of information. The Fall 1998 and Winter 1998 data was refreshed with corrected data by using the IMS database as the source. Any history data required will need further investigation to determine where the source should or could come from, since this information is purged from the IMS database each term.
Updates to the data dictionary continues.
(MP)
The design for the Tuition Attribution module was completed in January. The database structures have been created and the code to load the data is in progress. Test data was provided by OBP. Thanks to the detailed work by Lori Haskins, the calculations for derived data was clearly defined and greatly improved the understanding of what was necessary. It is expected to have something ready for testing in late February.
The GQL diagram for the Tuition Attribution piece was completed. Tables from the Cost Attribution model were selected based on the new budget requirements defined to management in early November. Almost all of the remaining tables for the Budget model, including the source/use information has been modeled. A final decision-making meeting concerning these last two pieces (Cost and Source/Use) is scheduled for February.
Progress on the data dictionary continues.
(MP)
(SR)
How much of Kari's report should go in here?
(KG)
(TV)
U-M GATEWAY - project number 10014
12 new entries were added in the Gateway catalog this month. News items were updated on a weekly basis. Gateway email was approximately 20% greater than normal, mostly due to the football team's championship.
The "dancing baby" phenomenon caused a major traffic surge on the personal sites this month, as we have two users with extensive content/links on this topic. IFS and DNS system problems have caused Web performance slowness -- we are working with the appropriate service support folks.
Traffic/server statistics for January (see www.umich.edu/admin/ for details) --
| Personal sites | 24,489,709 requests served | 464,071 Mbytes transferred |
| Departmental sites | 19,734,994 requests served | 100,908 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.
The Web and DDS database folks will be meeting in February 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.
Detailed information on production Web server configuration and statistics can be found at http://www.umich.edu/admin/.
| WEB Statistics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Month | #Requests | #bytes | #hosts |
| 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 made minor changes for handling ITD staff billing and student billing. (Cornelius Msipha)
Cornelius has completed work on including the uniqname as part of the primary key to address the Social Security Number issue. Also completed an FTP process so that the PRISM data can be refreshed from HR. (Cornelius Msipha)
Wrote program to output data based on format requested by customer and then determined methed to FTP or email the same data. Waiting to gain access to Kiwi server which has Oracle's Text Search software needed to be tested and applied to this application to improve the search capabilities. (Cornelius Msipha)
Minor additions were made this month as requested by the customer. (Kasthuri Ilankamban)
Preparation of workstation with OS8 was made to provide maintenance support to this project. Work will continue in February to complete the work and to load OS8 on the customer's final two workstations. (Hans Masing and Kasturi Ilankamban)
Reviewed project with customer and indicated that services related to billing and non-billing had to be resolved and a new black boarder approved in February. (Gail Lift)
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION (SOE) Project - project number A8166
A meeting is scheduled with the SOE group in February to review the additional tables and application needed to support the MPathways Project for Registration and Admissions. A review will be made to determine the timeframe for development of parts of the application not provided by MPathways. (Ray Guthrie)
Server issues have been resolved. This project will continue in February based on the direction the customer wants to assume. (Ray Guthrie)
Maintenance was provided on several ongoing projects as
requested by customers.
(RUG)
(XXXXX - All required blackboarders have been submitted or appropriate invoice has been submitted.)
B8868 - Clinical Scholars Project
Provided normal monthly support. Automated batch printing.
B8998 - Urology Surgery Database Project
Provided normal monthly support. Forms are mostly created and edited. Table relationships are built. Reports are being outlined by client. Automation of some data entry and extraction has been added to the system.
B9987 - School of Public Health
No support was provided this month. (Pamela Burghardt)
XXXXX - Business School Database
Pamela is working with Mark Fruin providing consulting services as requested. An invoice to cover Pamel's services to date will be submitted by Matt Kelley. (Pamela Burghardt)
XXXXX - CCGC, Cancer Center Geriatric Center (Prostate Study)
Analysis has been completed and a bid for for development and technical services was submitted and approved. Database development will start immediately to create the tables and the input screens. This database, the Prostate/Pathology database, and the Urology Surgery Database will be fully compatible with each other. (Pamela Burghardt & Ray Guthrie)
XXXXX - International Business Analysis
Provided client with means by which his data tables could be viewed and downloaded by students using the web. (Pamela Burghardt)
XXXXX - Prostate/Pathology Database
Client has bid in hand. We are waiting for him to accept and return
blackborder. The development of this database must be coordinated
with the Urology Surgery and Cancer Center databases. (Pamela Burghardt
& Ray Guthrie)
(RUG)
| School of Nursing, Public Site: http://www.umich.edu/~nursing/ |
| Office of Financial Aid, Spring/Summer financial aid forms: http://waccess.umich.edu/student/rff_main.html |
| Business School - Equity Project (#11304) |
Doug | Work essentially complete, but site not functional completely. Will follow up with contact to offer assistance. |
| Corporate & Foundation Relations (#10738) |
Melody, Jeremy | Continuing minor system updates per customer requests. |
| Dentistry: General (#11219) |
Scott | Submitted evaluation report to client, and met with them to review. |
| Dentistry: Biologic & Materials
Sciences (#11187) |
Karen, Linda, Doug, Scott | Planning for additional work under way. Search capabilities being installed (swishgate). |
| HRAA Professional
Development Calendar (#10756) |
Karen, Janani, Doug, Jeremy, Melody, Scott | This month error checking for the add/update/delete interface was close to completion. The loading of the ITD Workshop classes has been streamlined and the batch loading of that data has been successfully handed off to Education Services. Site at: http://www.profdevcal.umich.edu/ |
| Technology Management Office
(TMO) (#10816) |
Carol, Scott, Kevin | Quite a few edits to site content this month. Kevin will be working on server support questions. |
| School of Nursing, Public Site (# 11333) |
Denise | Public site succesfully launched: http://www.umich.edu/~nursing We're getting positive feedback and people are sending us corrections. Units within the School are now seeking assistance to either create their own sections within the new site (e.g., most of the research units) or want to expand on their sections (e.g., the divisions). I'm working on a maintenance plan. Starting this month, I'll be serving as webmaster for this site and spending one day a week in this role. |
| School of Nursing, Intranet (#11333) |
Denise | The Intranet was put on-hold for January so that we could get the public site live. The due date for this project is March 15. |
| School of Nursing, Office of Student
Affairs (OSA) (#10765) |
Denise | Student handbook, online at http://www.umich.edu/~nursing/students. The handbook was converted to the new design to look like the rest of the site. Bill Haynes (OSA's technical support person) continues to add items to the Calendar and Bulletin Board. |
| School of Nursing, Undergraduate
Curriculum Revision (#11333) |
Denise | The second delphi is finished. They got 25 online responses. I demo-ed COW for the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee. There is a conference already set up for them and committee members are already thinking of ways that they can use COW to discuss issues in subgroups of the committee. |
| School of Nursing, International Network
for Doctoral Education in Nursing (#11333) |
Denise | This is a project that has stemmed from the Public site. It will be a small site (only 4 second-level sections) and the graphics are done. Though funding is through nursing, it will have it's own IFS space in order for this group to appear somewhat independent from the School. I'm working with Arlene O'Sullivan from the International Affiars Office on this project and we are doing it for Dr. Ketefian. |
| Pathways Network (SoE) (#10766) |
Scott, Doug, Kevin | Kevin is helping get the SOE server stuff straightened out and Doug needs to make some minor artwork changes. Should all be finished this month. |
| Transportation Services (#tbd) |
Karen, Melody | Customer has approved process analysis phase. Kickoff to be held early February. |
| MSA - Advice Online (#11235) |
Bret | Next phase of data importing will start shortly. |
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 | Discovered that there is a Lotus based application available that deals with a piece of SW Distribution that is worth investigation. With the unveiling of t e revised IT web site in late January, a more complete analysis of if and how the SW Licensing specifications can fit within and coordinate with other software licensing/distribution/information related needs can be done in February. |
| 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 | Worked with H. Masing to impelment online ordering for graduating seniors. Will be putting UMOL User Guide online soon. |
| ITD Equipment Inventory (#tbd) |
Carol | Discussions begun with Donna Chambers about a Web-based equipment inventory for ITD. Waiting for funding information. |
| Distributed Support Pilots | Carol | Meetings coming in early February to determine assistance needed, focusing on integrating course and instructional information into Dentistry and Pharmacy main web sites. |
| Business School | Continuing to investigate Web statistical reporting possibilities for communications office. Also met with Ctr. for International Business Education (CIBE) about hosting alternatives, and are following up on an inquiry from CEMP as well. |
| Health Services | Carol met with Jeanne Strickland and Beth Bridson - they are looking for general Web server and site support. Karen followed up with estimate for converting one large document to Web. Waiting to hear their response. |
| Medical School | Carol met with Jonathan Maybaum and Casey White to discuss their Web support needs as part of Brenda Hill putting together partnership proposal. |
| Health Media Research Lab | HMRL - Ed Saunders new job. They are interested in having us host their Web site, but need support for WebObjects. |
| Dentistry - Online Grades | A potential project, with Mike Buhr of Data Admin. creating a development estimate - they are currently assessing alternatives for allowing students access to their grades via the web (a la Wolverine Access, but from their internal database). |
January's WWW SIG group meeting was held on on 1/15. Bill Wrobleski presented the current status and architecture of the planned Web interface for MPathways. The next session is on 2/19.
Linda and Carol met with the CRM group to discuss cooperative marketing approaches, and also the new collaborative effort with departmental databases and Wolverine Access to provide a single interface point for departmental systems development needs. Rseponse from attending CRMs was very positive.
Updates to Web Services web site (www.umich.edu/~websvcs) are in the works - we need to give better information about the services we provide, the cost, and how to acquire/use them.
Product Support and Evaluation:
RealMedia - purchase is in progress (P.O. has been issued). Testing has begun on Real Media version 5. There are currently 2 test users for the new version from the Business School and Language Resource Center, with others about to be added.
WebObjects - we will be getting a copy of this tool, via Gavin's arrangement with Apple, for evaluation purposes, and hopefully use on upcoming projects. Several folks will be attending training as it becomes available.
Java - several Java development tools are under investigation for various projects and just for our own educational purposes. Bret and Jeremy will present information about several at an upcoming WWWSIG meeting.
Hans is documenting his PERL libraries and API for general use.
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.
(ML)
(CB,WC)
(WC)
(AI,WC)
(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. For more information on IAA, see http://www.ifs.umich.edu/~fceiaa/
A new effort was launched 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. 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 January we made progress on selecting a vendor, migration testing, and resolving some scalability issues related to the fact that the U-M has a very large Kerberos cell.
IAA Team: Bob King, Barbara Brown, Marcus Watts, Dan Hyde, Diana Noble,
Jim McGran, Kevin Coffman, Dave Detlefs, Steve Rothwell,
Mike Graham (project leader)
(MG)
The IFS service 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 80,000 IFS home directories and the IFS stores over 387 billion bytes of data. For more information on IFS, see http://www.ifs.umich.edu/~ifs/
The IFS team is migrating the eighteen AFS file servers to the latest version of Transarc's AFS software. We expect the migration to be completed during February.
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.
IFS Team: Bob King, Barbara Brown, Marcus Watts, Dan Hyde, Diana Noble,
Jim McGran, Mike Graham (project leader)
(MG)
(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.
Members of the Online Directory Team continue to work with the Office of Development to plan the implementation of an online alumni directory service. We provided an informal estimate of costs, and are beginning to assess our resource commitment to the effort.
Planning for client strategies continues; we expect to replace our current suite of clients with a single web-based Kerberized client within the next year.
Directory content review is underway to determine what parts of the directory information tree can be eliminated or modified, and what kind of error correction will be necessary as we migrate to the new directory. Current targets of investigation are:
Planning is underway for the semi-annual Netscape-University of Michigan technical meeting that will occur February 16th at U-M.
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 the Kerberos Local Proxy/Plug-in, campus on-line directory efforts, umich.edu cell Kerberos 5 migration, the targeted e-mail service, and support for databases on departmental servers. Also, pilots with the Department of Kinesiology and the School of Information are continuing. New collaboration with other UM database administrators and database developers is also starting, and collaboration with CSCAR is reviving and being reshaped.
ITD LOGIN SERVICE (Project 10001)
Usage:
The IFS password file now contains more than 83,943 entries; the password file is over six megabytes in size. The ITD Login service has 77,786 subscribers, up by 1 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. Concurrent usage has increased almost 10% since the end of last term.
New Features:
Access to the ITD Login Service is now available to all eligible faculty, students, and staff, and no longer requires a specific subscription. Kiosk received a face-lift, and now provides our customers access to system performance information.
Technical Achievements:
Work continues on developing an operational unit of the GPCC team. Several candidates have been contacted.
ITD STATISTICS AND COMPUTATION SERVICE (Project 10006)
Usage:
The ITD Statistics and Computation service has 1,128 subscribers, up 40 subscribers (4 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:
A batch processing subsystem is available for testing on bagel and poleposition. We're creating documentation and selecting test candidates before we roll it out later this term.
We've entered into a new collaboration effort with CSCAR. CSCAR has purchased LISREL for us to deploy on the Statistics & Computation Service server (poleposition). This is the first time that a university unit other than our own has purchased software for deployment on this service. CSCAR was able to get more accessibility for the LISREL package this way, and the cost for a Unix server license was comparable to a PC license for LISREL. Anyone accessing poleposition is free to use the LISREL software. The new LISREL media arrived this week and is expected to be available on the service by the end of this week.
HLM license keycodes were renewed for another year of service. The primary person responsible for developing HLM is now teaching at UM. We anticipate
usage of this package to grow accordingly.
SAS 6.12 was made the default version of SAS, rather than the older SAS 6.11. The older version is still available for use for several months.
MATLAB is up for renewal. Over the past year we received many suggestions about our matlab configuration and several complaints that there were not enough MATLAB licenses available on our service. The software budget for our project must remain stable, however, so administrators are investigating increasing the number of MATLAB toolboxes available without exceeding our MATLAB software budget. Toolboxes we'd like to add include Statistics, Optimization, and Image Processing in addition to continuing to offer our Wavelet and Signal Processing toolboxes. MATLAB has brought many users to our service, according to emails we've received. We're still searching for a group to support MATLAB application questions our customers have.
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 89 machines (including the Login Service and Statistics and Computation Service machines).
New Features:
We held a training session for 7 students (from ITD Contract Services, UMCE operations, and the School of Information) during January. Training will continue in February.
Technical Achievements:
Because of AFS reliability and performance problems, we're developing an AFS-less template system so that AFS can be made an optional part of the ITD PowerAdmin service.
E-mail: itd-login-admin@umich.edu
(EV)
| IRAP Home Page |
|---|