1. Brian Arkills barkills@cac.washington.edu barkills@cac.washington.edu Nebula Internals Today

2. Problems Today Problems reported daily with vbAdm. Errors often are cryptic. Repros involve long sequences of actions. Last stable version of vbAdm? No one knows!  A fix to a vbAdm problem breaks something else. Long lead time to adjust all code to respond to environment changes or to create new reports Sporadic strange errors passed to users by loginnt. These are directly linked to limitations in the Access technology behind the Nebula DB.

3. A Vision For 2006 Separation of core code into a clear framework –Framework provides basis for architectural assumptions and core functionality Consistent functionality across any application that makes use of it A framework for easily adding additional functionality outside of the GUI interface. Takeaways: –This should result in much quicker response to changes and requests –Greater stability will result as a fix won’t cause unforeseen (broken) behavior elsewhere

4. I’m Not Dead Yet! vbAdm dies. New application with both GUI and web interface are provided with cleaner design and organization –Same underlying functionality is retained –Exceptions are passed to the user, so debugging is simplified –We lose the nest of ugly code we inherited that’s very difficult to debug

5. How’d We Get Here? Grew out of Windows for Workgroups and NT 3.5 domains Microsoft Access database format was cutting edge Inability/reluctance to use Active Directory to store user info from other services Pasted Calendaring service onto existing Windows + Unix services Low engineer count (had to fit this in somewhere ) Lack of structured approach to coding

6. vbAdm At A Glance Behind vbAdm are almost all the core pieces of the Nebula infrastructure. They include: –UW Staff Directory –Active Directory –Nebula DB which most notably manages: Loginnt and application packages Web reports –Oracle Calendar –“Ref” which manages: Nebula-unified Unix password file for file servers Nebula home directories Pine configuration files Account/Group creation in Active Directory –Shiva for on-demand port scans –LPN for printer queues

7. Delving Into vbAdm

8. Where We Want To Go Tomorrow Veteran’s Day, 2005: Have working demo of re- architected Nebula core Thanksgiving, 2005: Begin review within Nebula Engineering on design and implementation details Christmas, 2005: Migrate Nebula DB to SQL Server 2005 and Active Directory Martin Luther King Day, 2005: Release replacement for vbAdm Groundhog’s Day 2006: Throw release party

9. Nebula Internals Tomorrow

10. Takeaways The Nebula infrastructure is complex vbAdm bridges that complexity, but it’s not optimal Nebula Engineering knows vbAdm isn’t optimal Nebula Engineering is working on a BIG fix Be patient.