Grouper Users - Open Discussion List

[Chris Hyzer <>]

We have our org chart represented as folders/groups, and as permissions.  It 
is permissions because we have applications where we want to grant someone 
access to READ or WRITE data associated with a particular org.  The 
hierarchies in the permissions are relationships in the attributeDefNameSet.  
i.e. one permission will imply all the permissions underneath.  i.e. if you 
grant to the department, you get all the orgs underneath.

Both of these approaches are done with the loader linked to our data 
warehouse.  With folders/groups, you have a strict hierarchy, a group can 
only be in one folder.  But the attributeDefNameSet relationship is a 
directed graph, so you could have multiple parents.  How are you going to use 
the data?  If you want to query out who someone's supervisor(s) or 
supervisee(s) are, then you cant use the WS right now (to find out 
attributeDefNameSet relationships), you would have to do a SQL call... :)  
Also, not really recommending you do this, just mentioning :)

Thanks,
chris

-----Original Message-----
From: 

 
[mailto:]
 On Behalf Of Richard James
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 9:59 AM
To: grouper users list
Subject: [grouper-users] Representing People Hierarchies in Grouper

Hi,

I am wondering if anyone can share any experiences/approaches for 
representing a hierarchy of people in Grouper. At Newcastle we have been 
loading in an organisational hierarchy, so the hierarchical relationship is 
people to team and team to department. We now have use cases which require 
representing a people management hierarchy i.e. person to line manager to 
department head and so on. As ever with this being a University, you have the 
exceptions where people report to 2 line managers which adds a level of 
complexity.

We are currently trying to find the best way to proceed with representing 
these kinds of structure. We were wondering if anybody has had an experience 
of representing this type of structure within Grouper? And if so could 
provide us with any guidance/approaches for proceeding with this, or examples 
of similar structures represented within your deployments of Grouper.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Regards

Richie


Richard James
Infrastructure Systems Administrator
ISS Systems Architecture
Newcastle University