From: Janet Marie Jackson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 20:22:27 -0400 (EDT)
Thanks to those who have answered. Let me clarify a bit more what I
need to do. We want to use $USER to verify a valid user before running
the program, so this is very unlikely go on the web or have a web
interface. If a teaching assistant's personal account is compromised,
we're really in deep you-know-what - otherwise, it's our best choice for
security. The program will not be accessed by anyone other than the
course staff.
Do all authenticated users have equivalent privileges? That is, is it
OK for TA's to access/update scores for other courses? If not, you will
need to think about how to apply system file permissions to implement
the compartmentalization you need -- you probably are already aware of
this, but relying on users not to defeat any checks in the Perl script
is unwise. I would recommend one directory per course in that case.
Other than that wrinkle, relying on OS authentication is probably
easier to understand and set up that anything you would have to do for
an HTTP-based solution.
Please note that this does not preclude using an SQL database. You
can set up PostgreSQL (and maybe others these days) to listen only on
the loopback address, and use "authd" authentication. "authd" is
worthless on the Internet generally, but if you know you're talking to
yourself, it provides a painless way to map OS accounts to DB accounts;
the users don't have to have a separate DB password. Then, just set up
one database user per TA, and you can control access by granting
appropriate permissions to the right tables.
The feature to enter scores is where I'm stuck... I'm debating
trying to use something like curses to display all the student names and
to allow the user to navigate with arrow keys to enter scores, vs.
displaying one student at a time with a request for the score (which
doesn't need curses, but takes more time) - or some other variant of
either of these. At the same time, if the user doesn't want to go
through the entire section, he/she CAN specify only certain students. I
want this to be comfortable and convenient to use, so can't decide which
approach is preferable.
Thanks for your ideas! Jan
Uploading a spreadsheet is probably the most painless idea, especially
if you provide for the possibility that a TA might upload the same
spreadsheet a second time, with corrections.
Failing that, prompting for one student at a time seems OK, as long
as the order is natural (i.e. corresponding to the gradesheets the TA's
are probably typing from), and you provide a feature to jump to an
arbitrary student (i.e. by typing a prefix of their name instead of a
score) when the TA says "Oops."
My $0.02.
-- Bob Rogers
http://rgrjr.dyndns.org/
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