Re: [Phpwebsite-developers] phpWS/2: Part 1 (users and groups)

[clayton c. <cc...@ca...>]

Todd,
  good to hear from you. i was about to fire up a "call to action" email
before i saw your post.

> *Users table will be minimalistic
absolutely !

> * User_space and Group_space will be flat.
> A flat groupspace enables any user to be a member of any group.  This is
> great until you only want a subset of the Physics Dept (group) to be
> moderators on Physics Dept announcements.  I decided that instead of
FORCING
> a group tree hierarchy, I would let the individual site administrator make
> sure that only Physics group member were in the Physics-moderators group.

this can be simplified by allowing roles on the group membership table,
which to me is a necessity anyway in the cases your envisioning. in the
Physics Dept, for instance, i want to be able to set permissions on
different activities based on whether a person is Chair, Faculty, Staff,
Student or Moderator (administrator). the ACS code i ported accomodates
this, though i can probably simplify it a bit. more comments below ...

another idea that may make the administator's job easier is a group
membership queue with 1 click approval on the admin side. that way anyone
can try to join, but they're only in if approved. this can be made optional,
too.

> Groups table:
> group_id  INTEGER primary key
> name  VARCHAR(32)
> parent_id INTEGER [foreign key to group_id]
> [root has same group and parent id]
or parent_id == NULL

>
> group_membership table (matrix):
> group_id INTEGER [foreign key]
> user_id INTEGER [foreign key]
> index on group_id
> index on user_id
> index on group_id, user_id
> [speeds up membership searches significantly]

i think we should support roles for the reasons mentioned above. this should
help mitigate the effects of a flat user-space (at least as it relates to
group). as explained above, it allows more natural expression of other core
processes (access control/security and task partitioning, etc).

im trying to get an app out the door, but i'll post more as time permits.

clayton