[thesite] My Intro and a look at a UEUE Proposal

Mark Nickel mnickel at new.rr.com
Mon Oct 15 21:09:07 CDT 2001


New term:  UEUE ID  (pronounced you wee you wee i dee :)  )  Feeling like a
Dr. Suess book here  :)  The UEUE ID is *the* unique identifier, similar to
the member id.  It's guaranteed to be unique across all *.evolt.org sites...

ueue.evolt.org will maintain a list of all *.evolt.org sites that a
particular UEUE ID is a member.

Ok, so to summarize a little bit...

1.  Dealing with the actual act of logins across the sites is covered by the
UEUE ticketing/cookie idea.
2.  Problems with synching the "other" data that might not be transmitted
within the cookies from the ueue.evolt.org to food.evolt.org.  This Foreign
Key information....

(btw, I like the food.evolt.org example, easy to type.  :)  )

Here are some assumptions...
1.  ueue.evolt.org would contain fields that are not specific to the Child
Server site.
2.  each child site would still have a user table that would contain content
specific stuff like the number of articles by the user for the
food.evolt.org site...  permission level for the site, eg:  admin,
contributor, head chef??, etc.  :) -- Primary Key is UEUE ID
3.  each Child Server will be running a version of the evolt CMS
4.  each Child Server would have it's own list of article/content categories

eg:  food.evolt.org is going to have a different list of categories than
w.e.o.  Recipes, Ingredients, Store Reviews, etc.  My articles, referrers
and such would still be contained in a local user table but in a context
specific to the food.evolt.org site.

The crux of this is the actual adding of the UEUE ID and User Name to the
Child Server's User table so that the user has the ability to post articles
on the Child Server.

Possibility:
Brand New User to food.evolt.org, Existing User on w.e.o ---
--------------------------------------------------------------
The user has successfully authenticated to ueue.evolt.org and their cookie
jar is full of the important fields:  UEUE ID, User Name, etc.   When the
browser is redirected to food.evolt.org, their UEUE ID looked up in the
local food.evolt.org user table.  It's not found--Here's the questionable
part, if the UEUE ID is not found, the ColdFusion automagically adds the
user to the local food.evolt.org User table and logs them in.

As the user posts messages, their article counts and references are all
correctly updated on the food.evolt.org site.

New User throughout all *.evolt.org sites.
------------------------------------------
For a new account, their UEUE ID is created, password obtained, etc.  Their
cookie jar is filled with appropriate data.  Just like above, the Child
Server automagically adds them to the local User table and they post away.

So each *.evolt.org site is effectively a little island of content. Thereby
allowing people use the evolt CMS without having a sophisticated
infrastructure.  However because each *.evolt.org is an island, this of
course begs the next question:  How can I know how many articles that I've
written/commented upon/etc across all of the *.evolt.org sites.

Global User Information
-------------------------
If we don't do the one global table, like Matt has already suggested, then
any application that wants a 30000 foot view of User specific information
will have to query the ueue.evolt.org server for the list of all Child
Servers the user is a member, query each Child Server for the user's content
information, and pull all of that into one report or list.

I think that this could certainly be done through the cron.  I doubt it
would need to be real-time generated.

So, if food.evolt.org wants to list the articles that a User has written on
other *.evolt.org sites, then it will have to run the background process to
locally cache that information from the other *.evolt.org servers.

Without a 100% central repository of content information, one must
replicate.  Dynamic queries over the network will be to expensive.  Besides,
the admins of food.evolt.org may not have any interest in showing the other
things their users have done.  They may just want to focus on food-related
stuff.

I'm sure I'm not suggesting anything really new... It sounds like parts of
this discussion have happened in the past.. :)  Please forgive me if I'm
repeating an existing argument... :)  I'm slowly trying to make my way
through the archives... :)

Mark

--
"Caution: Cape does not enable user to fly."

-Batman costume warning label






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