Distributed staff directory system for a campus

One of the common information services required in a campus environment is online directory services such as phone directory. This paper discusses the implementation of such a directory service. Besides being an online phone directory, this system also provides additional staff information such as staff photographs and their academic interests. This Staff Directory is built to supplement other applications such as NTU Helpdesk, Electronic Mail and Staff Administration applications. In order to meet this object, the Staff Directory needs to be built based on a client-server model in a heterogeneous environment. MS-Windows 3.1 has been chosen as the common GUI platform for integrating the various campus information services. For the Staff Directory, the client development tools used include Asymmetrix's ToolBook and Borland's Turbo C++. The server is based on a Vaxstation 4000 running VMS. The server development tools used include VAX C, and the DDS (Distributed File System) file system. DDS was chosen because it was already in use by the campus-wide electronic mail application in NTU. For communications between the client and the server, DECmessageQ for MS-DOS and VMS are used. DECmessageQ was chosen because it can work in a multivendor environment and has advanced features such as message recovery services and selective broadcast services. More importantly, with a simple set of only 12 calls, it simplifies and expedites the development of interprocess communications by hiding the complexities of underlying network protocols such as DECnet, TCP/IP, SNA and etc.