[SUCS Devel] Data held on membership

[Denis Walker]

Another issue that needs to be addressed regarding membership data is 
where it is to be stored.

Currently, it is held in the old "sucs" postgres database, which I'd hope 
we can make redundant in the medium term - it was the one used by the old 
website and contains various unused tables relating to the old site.

There is the possibility of holding it in the "sucssite" db, but I'm not 
personally keen on that idea as I think membership data should be stored 
separately from the website.

Personally, I think the most logical place would be in the LDAP database, 
which would mean that all member data is held in the one place and would 
make maintaining it much easier. However, I don't know how easy it would 
be to add fields to do this.

So I would suggest LDAP for preference, but if that proves impractical, 
then a new dedicated postgres db (called "members"?).

A particular reason for my interest is that I've just started work on a 
member "Options" page for the website (http://beta.sucs.org/Tools/Options) 
which is intended to be able to edit some of this information. I'm 
intending that any changes will require the user's current password to be 
entered, to avoid them forgetting they've left themselves logged into the 
site and someone else making changes. Perhaps some changes might also 
require admin approval before being applied?

Of course, another reason is that we really ought to get all the member 
handling stuff moved from old.sucs.org before the beginning of the new 
academic year.

-- 
Denis Walker
dez at sucs.org