These records are then combined with records referencing over 90 hosts, and user entries are made available to the right hosts. Newer Solaris 2.7 hosts, as well as authenticateed web services, depend on LDAP to get the user information, but LDAP ultimately gets the information from the ID system. The ID system is most visible at our Computing Support Center, where people go for help creating or renewing their accounts, but is constantly active keeping passwords up to date, and creating new accounts on demand. Our ID system, as well as our hosts database, class scheduling software, and a number of other systems, require a large relational database system. We use Ingres, and for optimal performance the database runs on a dedicated database backend host.
Client programs run on many other hosts updating their various databases.
We also have some databases in DB2, with a backup server on the way. DB2 is primarily used for databases of web information. Additionally, our Remedy tracking system uses Sybase, and our CourseWorks system uses Oracle. And postgresql for the CubMail database. With so many hosts at Columbia and elsewhere, no one host can keep track of them all, so each domain is responsible for helping other domains resolve local hostnames.