On Thu, 30 May 91 15:06:41 EST Jim Jones said:
>On Thu, 30 May 91 11:23:00 CDT Chris Barnes said:
>>2)  As you have no doubt seen from Mark Williams message earlier,
>>there already is a local mod for LISTSERV called WHOIS.  It would
>>probably be a good idea to get that package and hack it to lookup
>>your local telephone directory (in fact, I have those exact plans
>>for my site...).
>
> Well, what I want to do here on JHUVM is just use the Listserv UDD
> facility for lookups.  If I remember right (I do have the /WHOIS
> package installed), /WHOIS uses the SIGNUP FILE, which is not just
> for it's own use.  So, your queries will return anyone who ever
> SUB'd to a list or sent a REGISTER command.  Plus, I thought that
> the author had stopped supporting it?  UDD is a much better solution,
> even if your users (like mine) want a cutesy front end for adding
> themselves to the database.  (Sigh!)
>
 
I wasn't going to bother the list with my plans, but since
this has become the *hot* topic lately, maybe I should.
Currently we have our entire university phone directory
on-line (the on-line version also includes an e-mail
address).  It exists on an MVS machine in ADAbase.  We
currently run TCP/IP on almost every machine on this campus
(including an awful lot of PCs'/Macs).  Someone else here
wrote a little program (called phonebook) for his NeXT which
sends a command to a service machine on MVS side to lookup
an entry and return the results back to his NeXT.  Soon
after, someone else ported it to their Mac that does the
same thing.  I suspect that within a couple of months, this
program will be ported to every platform we have here.
 
(now my idea) After the program is ported to VM, I could get
a copy of WHOIS and hack it so that instead of looking in a
SIGNUP FILE, it calls phonebook, with the results being trasmitted
back to whomever issued the (LISTSERV) WHOIS command.  This
would effectively make our campus directory available to
everyone that can reach our LISTSERV....
 
 
Comments?
 
Virtually,
Chris Barnes                           x045cb@tamvm1            (BITNET)
(409) 845-8300                         [log in to unmask]  (Internet)