We need vocabulary -- Was: Re: [Babase] Ranker Meeting

Karl O. Pinc kop at meme.com
Wed Apr 25 11:25:42 EDT 2007


On 04/25/2007 08:03:51 AM, Lacey Maryott wrote:

> *The interface requires a log in and that log in will be the same as  
> your PPA login.

A note on vocabularly, because getting the terms right will help
everybody understand how things work.  If we get the words
wrong confusion will forever reign and there will be much
wailing and gnashing of teeth.  :-)

Both PPA and the ranker, and anything else that gets access to
the database, require a "database login".  If we want we
can call it a postgres (or postgresql) login, because that's
the database software.  Or, we can call it a Babase login.

Let's pick a consistent name and use that everywhere.
I've been using "database login", but one of the others
might make more sense to people.  I'd shy away from
"PPA login" because it's not something that's PPA specific.

The other login that we have get's ssh access to papio.
I've been calling this a "Unix login".  We could call it
a papio login.  It turns out that this same username/password
pair also grants the people at Duke access to other
biology related computers, so I'm sure there's a name
for it (like "biology login"?) used by Duke.  However
Duke's term is associated with access that we don't normally have
so I don't think we want to use Duke's term.

The "Unix login" grants access to the VPN.  It'll be
necessary to start the VPN (when not at Duke) to run
the ranker program.  When using the ranker
the Unix login turns on the VPN, which gets you to papio,
the database login then gets you to the database.

Most Babase user's don't need a Unix login because they
get to papio over the web.  The ranker program talks
directly to the database, on papio, and so needs
permissions to get through Duke's firewalls to papio.
The VPN provides this access.

That's the story.  Please chime in and let's pick some
vocabulary for the two kinds of logins.

When we pick something could somebody write up the
results on the wiki?  (Which reminds me, there's
also a wiki username/password, so your sophisticated
Babase user will have 3 logins.  I'm sure I could
make the wiki use the database login, but it's
almost surely not worth messing with.  Oh yeah.
There's also the mailing list username (aka email address)
and password.  But nobody really ever uses that
except to sign up or un-sign up.
Except for the mailing list _administrator_ username
and password....  *sigh*)

Karl <kop at meme.com>
Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
                  -- Robert A. Heinlein



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