Minutes of Cross-Division Meeting, 3rd May 2000

  1. Attendance List

  2. Apologies for absence

    • Archie Howitt
    • Tim Colles

  3. Matters Arising

    1. Informatics newsgroups

      Propagation of site-specific newsgroups has been enabled, and Ross Hamilton will co-ordinate further discussion about the constitution of a suitable Informatics newsgroup hierarchy.

      [Action: RAH]

    2. Clarification of VLAN support from EUCS

      EUCS appear to be supporting VLANs, but only unofficially. It is understood that FCC will push for official support, George Ross will continue to push EUCS on behalf of Informatics.

      [Action: GDMR]

    3. Access [via Perl] to Divisional Database

      Access will be provided to a sub-set of data only, that which has been defined as "public" - and this data will be exported to relevant users/sites.

      Requirements for QI will be dealt with by Alastair Scobie.

      [Action: AJS]

      The sub-set of data to be exported will be determined based on requests for particular fields, co-ordinated by Ken Dawson.

      [Action: KTD]

  4. Any relevant Responsible Person reports

    • Simon Wilkinson and Neil Brown reported that implementation of remote access for local web pages was underway (this was to enable local users who were away from Edinburgh to access Ed-only pages). A name and password mechanism is to be introduced (the ITO DB is accessed via a different mechanism, and is not affected by this measure).

    • Craig Strachan announced that site versions of TeX etc would be upgraded (if necessary) to tetex 1.0.6, so that a consistent version would be available across the Division.

      [Action: CMS]

    • There was some discussion with CS about how this would affect students currently taking exams, and it was agreed that the Linux RPM updates on the CS teaching machines would be frozen until end of term, so current changes to TeX will have no effect on these machines (Chris Cooke will disable the RPM updates on the teaching machines).

      [Action: CC]

  5. Presentation by Henry Thompson

    Henry gave an overview of markup technologies to give COs an understanding of how HTML, SGML, XML, DTD, XSL, DSSSL, DocBook, etc all hang together.

    (it has been decided that DocBook is the format DICE should use for the project documentation as it allows output to be created in different formats eg for the web, printed if necessary, etc)

    For further info, see www.ltg.ed.ac.uk

  6. Tabling of CEG Minutes

    • Paul commented on item 2.1 from the minutes of the 18th April, concerning a formal reply to EUCS' request for input to the planning process.

      An official "Informatics" statement has been submitted identifying three problem areas which are not believed to be adequately addressed by EUCS at present:

      1. Co-ordinated development and planning of high-level infrastructure, in consultation with departmental COs.

      2. Support for management of Microsoft operating systems (EDWIN).

      3. Provision of clear policies in areas such as privacy and service levels.

    • Alastair announced that experimental work on DICE authentication and directory services would take place on a small cluster of machines at BP.

    • Alastair also announced that Informatics was likely to be in receipt of money during this financial year to replace the JCMB door locks with "Mondex" ones. There is also some possibility of replacing the No.4 BP door.

  7. Items for discussion from CEG:

    There were none.

  8. A.O.B

    Alastair announced that the Division were in discussions with Microsoft about the donation of OS licences. This donation is for academic development work, and the offer applies to licences for Windows 95/98/2000/NT and other development environments. It does NOT apply to admin staff, although it does apply to students, and home machines used for academic work. Application packages (Office, Word, etc) are NOT included in the offer. It is assumed that about 1400 licences will be requested. This is being pursued by Alastair.

    [Action: AJS]

    Also mentioned was the acquisition of MSDN licences and technical documentation.

  9. Date of Next Meeting

    ... is Wednesday, 31st May - to be held at JCMB (Room 2511)

Those present at this meeting were:


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