Patent ID: 8190640

Claim:
A group management system for managing groups in a Unix environment, the system comprising: a group information database hosted by a secure server and storing information about groups and their members, wherein the group information database stores hierarchical information and attributes about groups and their members, and; wherein the group information database is a structured query language (SQL) database; a non-transitory machine-readable medium storing executable instructions, the instructions comprising: a group management engine that accesses the group information database, the group management engine executing commands received from administrators of a group via the Unix command line interface to change attributes of members in the group, wherein the group management engine operates on the hierarchical information and supports inheritance of the attributes based on the hierarchical information, wherein at least one member is defined as an episodic member, whose membership repeatedly starts and ends according to a predetermined schedule, the group management engine automatically adding and deleting the member defined as an episodic member according to the predetermined schedule, wherein the administrators include roles for owners, superowners and approvers, the owners having authority to approve changes in members for a group, the superowners having authority to approve changes in owners for a group, the approvers having authority to approve changes in members for a group but only for a predetermined limited time period, wherein the administrators include at least one role that does not have direct access to change a master network information service (NIS) group map for the Unix environment, and wherein the administrators also include at least one role that does not include root privileges to the Unix environment; a NIS converter that accesses the group information database, and generates a NIS group file that describes a group and its members in a format that is NIS-compatible, wherein the NIS converter generates an updated NIS group file each time the group management engine makes a change that would affect the NIS group file, and wherein the NIS group file is incorporated into the master NIS group map via the #include# <filename> construct; a log module coupled to the group management engine, the log module recording changes to the groups and members; and a notification module coupled to the group management engine, the notification module sending notifications according to the commands executed by the group management engine, wherein the notifications include a notification that a member is about to expire from a group; and a processor to execute the instructions.