The ECN No Name Newsletter is no longer being published. This is an archived issue.

PH: Reason For Use

NO NAME NEWSLETTER -- May 1996

Kyler Laird

The Purdue University Computing Center (PUCC) now maintains a database of basic faculty, staff and student information, called PH . Much of the work on this project has been done by Kent De La Croix and Dave Halsema (of ECN fame). Regardless of whether or not you use it, information about you is available from this database. It is important that this information is correct because it will be used in various ways by many people across campus.

Your PH information is built from records provided by Management Information (MI). If you are a student, your data is maintained by the Registrar. If you are in a faculty or staff position, your data is kept current by Personnel Services via the Form 13.

Some of the information fields in the PH database are set up to be self-maintained. Examples are your alias, office number, FAX number, e-mail address and URL. You must set them and keep them current in order for the information to be useful.

% ph laird kyler

----------------------------------------
        name: kyler b laird
      campus: west lafayette
       title: research assistant
  department: schools of engr admin and engr exp sta
      school: graduate school
    building: msee
office_phone: +1 765 49-48649
  home_phone: 463-3447
home_address: po box 4742
            : lafayette, in 47903
       email: kyler@purdue.edu
     comment: also working for Jeff Wright in Civil Eng.
         url: http://pasture.ecn.purdue.edu/~laird/
----------------------------------------

E-Mail

ECN users typically use e-mail addresses such as laird@ecn.purdue.edu to refer to themselves. By setting my alias to kyler and my Mail*Hub service type to forward laird@ecn.purdue.edu . I can now receive mail sent to kyler@purdue.edu . This address is displayed when someone queries the PH database for my information because I also set my advertised electronic mail delivery address to kyler@purdue.edu .

This display of information is extremely helpful for everyone trying to locate individuals on campus.

WWW Homepages

Currently, Web servers are scattered throughout the ECN, all serving various users' homepages . In order to find a person's Web pages, a user typically needs to know what machine that person uses. PH solves this by allowing users to set their own homepage URL's.

http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~kyler/ is the advertised URL I elect to use. My true ECN URL is http://pasture.ecn.purdue.edu/~laird/ . This indirect method has the advantage (should I ever decide to move my Web pages to another machine), of requiring me to change only my PH URL value instead of changing every pointer to my pages.

Qualified Name

All of your PH data is keyed to your qualified name . This name is usually your first name, middle initial, last name and a number, separated by dots. For example, mine is kyler.b.laird.1 . The qualified name is not likely to change often, so it's good for use in lists.

Instead of a department trying to maintain a list of committee members and their FAX numbers, for example, it could just maintain a list of the committee members' qualified names. The members (instead of every committee, department, club, etc. that they're involved in) would then be responsible for keeping their information current. When someone wants to view the list, a simple script can generate the complete information from the qualified names. Check for sample scripts at http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/PH/test/ .

Food For Thought

Your PH data will soon be used in ways that you may not expect. If it is incomplete or incorrect, you may miss out. Fortunately, since the information is kept in one place, you need only make a single update instead of contacting everyone who might have some data about you.

HINT: For professors, this is a great place to inform students and colleagues of your office hours that may change every semester. :-)

See the article PH: ECN's Web interface for information about an easy way to change your PH data.

webmaster@ecn.purdue.edu

Last modified: Saturday, 02-Oct-99 10:29:17 EST

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