Accountworks: Users Create Accounts on SQL, Notes, NT and UNIX

Accountworks is a system which allows any employee at Sybase, Inc. to use a web form to create accounts for new employees. Every new hire gets a personal account in SQL, Notes, NT, and UNIX administrative domains. Accountworks also creates initial stub entries in our SQL personnel database. It allows the user to make a number of initial choices for their new employee, including access to popular applications and whether to use Notes or UNIX email. Typically all new accounts are available within four hours after the web form is submitted. The system operates 24 by 365 to support our worldwide infrastructure. When the accounts are created, it guarantees a consistent, unique login, UID (for UNIX), Firstname.Lastname record, and password across all domains. It went into full production in July 1997, and has been used to create 1900 new accounts since then. Because this paper is intended to help anyone tackling cross-domain account management problems, it describes the architecture of Accountworks, the process of building it, numerous design decisions, and future directions of the project.