Person Registry
Description of the UW Person Registry
The Person Registry ("PersonReg") team is responsible for:
- Supporting/maintaining Person Registry V1, the system currently in production
- Developing Person Registry v2, a faster, more robust system
See below for details and terms pertaining to the different versions.
Person Registry V1
V1 is currently in production. It:
- Collects high-level person data from numerous source systems on campus (Payroll, Student db, Alumni db, etc.)
- Reviews the person records from each source and combines them into individual person records where appropriate
- Provides applications with a single, shared source of information about UW people and their affiliations
A notable feature of the V1 system is that all queries are served by a database, which can have a negative effect on speed and robustness of the system.
V1 Terms
- Whatami - Unix shell or COM object that consuming applications use to extract Person Registry data from the V1 system. Note that some people loosely use the term "Whatami" to refer to the entire Person Registry system. More information on Whatami is here.
- Mango - Mango is a server that acts as an "information broker" between Whatami and the primary database. Mango also redirects queries to the backup database if/when the primary database is down.
- Shuksan - Shuksan is a DB2 database that holds Person Registry data. There are three Shuksan variants: primary, fallback, and test
- PersonReg Data - V1 data is defined in detail here
Person Registry V2.0 (codename "Nantucket")
V2.0 is currently in development. It is designed to be faster and more robust than V1 by utilizing a read-only LDAP directory to serve queries.
The V2.0 release will be production quality but, unlike Version 1, will only provide system keys (vs. all PersonReg data) to enable ID mapping. This limited feature set is intended to shorten development time and will provide useful functionality to numerous consuming applications.
For a detailed description of V2.0 release requirements, view the
V2 requirements document.
V2 Terms
- Enterprise Directory Service (EDS) - Refers to the LDAP director(ies) deployed in Version 2
Person Registry V2.x
Version 2.x will include:
- All of the V2.0 features
- Access to all PersonReg data
- Data-access management functionality
For a detailed description of V2.x release requirements, view the V2 requirements document.
Note: The NetID system is *not* part of the Person Registry system, though it
resides on Shuksan and works closely with it.
