Re: Counting users -- MIDRANGE-L

Take your pick ... my full name is Alister Wm Macintyre
to save hassles with phone callers (how do you spell pronounce ... is that a 
boy's name or a girls name ... I often go by Al Macintyre
around the office work place my moniker is Al Mac

Do you have a naming policy for your auto configuration?
We let auto config do its thing with DSP99 or PRT07 then we change the name 
to one based on location
PRTSHIP means printer in the Shipping Dept
anything without a "P" in front is a work station
BUY9 means it is in the Purchasing Dept

In the Textual description area we identify the building location
)e.g. NW corner of EVA factory) 
or the person desk it is on or office it is in
(e.g. RECEIVING of LAW factory)
and how many sessions that work station is capable of supporting

This serves a multitude of functions.
When we got error messages we not need to be saying
"Where the heck is DSP27?" because many people know our naming conventions & 
recognize what stuff is in accounting area, engineering areia, sales area, 
etc, & a few know how to look it up in the configuration.

Many people meet variations on this question when it comes to software 
licenses & what's honest & fair when the methodology of license enforcement 
is heavily based on our integrity, and it also comes up in sizing for 
performance.

In a small office you can answer the question with a walk around.
WHO is at that device, and how many are unattended with someone allegedly 
signed on & DSPLOG will tell you WHEN they signed on, and when you find the 
USER of that user-id we can ASK them.  

You may know someone at a remote office who you can trust to do the walk 
around to diplomatically locate the 5 sessions that currently signed on with 
same user-id & get you a spot check inventory ... while actually have someone 
standing or seated at that address, and if no one home, ask nearest work 
station user if they remember who was last person to use that device. 

I do not believe DSPLOG can go to an *OUTFILE to chart on/off by user id to 
locate overlaps, but if you have your suspicions about some pattern, you can 
do DSPLOG F4 & search for specific types of actifity & in fact I have a CL 
that regularly does a variation on that.

We do have some supervisory personnel who need to go to different places in 
the company to consult with people on wide ranges of topics & while there, 
use whatever device is convenient to look up stuff, and invariably leave it 
signed on, and hature of person job is they need high security, and I sure 
don't want to be the one to undermine their productivity.

I am aware of the practice.  I know the persons who doing it.
I have no authority to stop it.
When people ask me how come this or that data got corrupted,
I include this security risk as one of the possibilities.

In a larger enterprise where you not know everyone, and there are remote 
offices, you may need a tool like http://www.precosis.com.au/rv1.htm to spy 
on WHAT are those users DOING

We have twinax work stations scattered across our factory floor.
We have a very limited inquiry only sign on with a public password - by using 
it the people can only get to certain menus, certain inquiry options into our 
inventory & production & engineering information.
On a typical day, this same identical public sign on is being used at half a 
dozen different work stations in each of two factories for random look up of 
stuff by people to whom we have not issued individual user profiles.

This is a corporate policy that was suggested, discussed, approved.
It is well known throughout the company.

I could see that in some enterprises something like this might be going on 
without everyone concerned being aware of it, knowing why it is being done, 
or even approving of it.

Sometimes when a new person is hired & taught how to do their job, somehow 
MIS is not informed that we need to issue a new user profile, and they are 
using the sign-on & password of a co-worker.

We have people who are the only people with security access to some important 
stuff.  They go on vacation.  Their work gets done while they are away.  I 
have my suspicions how this is accomplished.

I personnally have 5 user-ids.  I use different ones for production vs. test 
environments, regular programming work v.s  high security stuff.  I am not 
the only person in this reality.  A count of user-ids is not a count of real 
person users.

We also have some dummy user profiles created to be depositories of shared 
messages, that started out as a different purpose

DSPMSG SALES to see messages that the sales dept needs to be aware of
Originally user SALES was intended for random inquiry by people who were not 
going to be heavy BPCS users.

The idea was ... issue user profiles to people doing heavy duty work & who 
needed different mix of security access, while each department have a limited 
security public sign on for the folks who needed occasional access to some 
inquiries ... this simplified training & we could have index card on work 
stations with sign-on & password which was setup so there was no way to spoof 
past that into stuff they not allowed to access, but then they started 
putting that on PCs & I had to pull that plug because of how BPCS 405 
"security" structured.

I think that perhaps software could be developed & may even exist to track 
the kind of information that performance tools get ... which of these 
interactive sessions are active at any one moment.  With a person signed onto 
multiple sessions of one terminal, theoretically they only active on one side 
AT A TIME.  With SAME person signed onto multiple terminals, theoretically 
they only active at one AT A TIME but some other user might come along & 
start using the signed on terminal, without first signing off the earlier 
user & signing on themselves.

> From: Ron@cpumms.com
>  
>  MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
>  Not sure what name to use here....
>  
>  This is exactly what we're trying to discover....
>  
>  
>  << I suspect the reality is not really 
>  1 person signed on at 5 terminals vs.
>  1 person signed onto 5 sides, but that the 
>  1 person signed on at 5 terminals is really 
>  5 people using the same sign-on, 
>  while the 1 person with 5 sides is
>  really one person at a time at that terminal. >>
>  
>  
>  Ron Hawkins


MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
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