Students in the Tree

By Allen Bradley, Manager, Campus Wide Networks Computing Team and Pat Evans, Campus Wide Networks Computer Support Specialist

Students in the Tree. No, it’s not the name of a new rock group or comedy troupe like Kids in the Hall, and no, it’s not a reference to students enjoying the greenery, but it is something new that will be a part of your UNT life before too long. Students in the Tree is the big project of the summer (and actually for some time prior) that will be making the coming semesters easier for everyone on campus.

So what is Students in the Tree?

The Students in the Tree (SIT) project is part of a larger campus wide effort to establish a Common Directory Service (CDS). The Common Directory Service would serve as the central database of user information that could be accessed from various systems for a variety of purposes. Currently it is common for UNT faculty and staff to have multiple user IDs for each system they need access to; in the student’s case, they may have a unique user ID for each course requiring computer access in addition to yet more user ID’s for various email systems. While the planning for this project has been going on for some time now, it continues to get more complicated and involved as additional groups start to recognize the advantages inherent to CDS, and express their desire to be involved.

A picture worth a thousand words

With a little bit of explanation, the picture above begins to make a lot of sense, and soon you can see how the Common Directory Service can make using computers on campus a little easier to utilize and manage. On the left, you see two images of mainframe computer systems, HRMIS and SIMS. Respectively, HRMIS handles faculty and staff information and SIMS handles student information. On the right, you see three servers…Other Systems, JOVE eMail and the NDS Tree. Without getting into a deep explanation of each system, it is just important to know that the NDS Tree (Novell Directory Service) is the "network" that sits on every computer on campus and allows you to login to network resources.

SIT Objectives and Benefits

The general objectives and benefits of SIT are:

Each student would be assigned a unique User ID (UID), which would remain constant throughout a student’s time at the University.

This UID can then be used to access networked computer resources for all classes regardless of the location of the resource on Campus. This would also eliminate the complicated issue of contextual logins (one’s current place in the network tree).

Distributed network managers would no longer need to create UIDs for new students for each class.

The UID could also be used by various email services as well.

Time delay problems associated with 3^rd, 4^th, or 12^th day registration rolls downloaded or printed from the mainframe are eased, as students would already have a UID.

With a unique ID, students would no longer have to login to lab machines as the lab machine, such as user0001 or lab0002 etc. With the elimination of impersonal naming, it would make it possible to track computer activity by students.

The bottom line of SIT

The bottom line to the whole Students in the Tree project is ease of use. From the time a new student at UNT starts classes, they will have a unique identifier assigned to them that the Common Directory Service recognizes at multiple levels. All student information required to keep accounts with the University correct, including billing and grades, to signing up for a mail account, to accessing general access lab computers and lab computers required for certain classes, ease of use will be the keyed to the student’s Unique ID. With a single UID, managing the thousands of student accounts will also be made easier, thus saving the University valuable time and money.

More information?

If you would like to learn more about the Students in the Tree project, feel free to contact your Network manager and/or keep reading Benchmarks Online for updates to this very promising project.