"What is CSO"
coo...@utopia.cc.nd.edu
> Excuse me for not knowing, but what is CSO?
"What is CSO" (short)
CSO (evidently shortened from "CCSO" at U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
their computing services organization) is an electronic directory
service, a queryable database containing information about people and
things. Lots of universities and organizations have set up CSO
nameservers and loaded them up with student, faculty, and staff
public information (things like e-mail address, campus address and
phone, and things like that.
When you search some electronic phonebooks using Gopher, you are
using CSO--the <phonebook> or (CSO) or "P" or little phonebook icon
is the visual cue that you are dealing with a CSO nameserver.
You may have heard/read about "ph" and "qi" in addition to CSO. They
are all parts of the same system. Ph is the client software that
does the querying. Qi is the server side.
If you want to take a look at the long version of this, I have put up
U. Illinois' and Northwestern's CSO/Ph introductory documents on
Notre Dame's gopher (gopher.nd.edu 70) in the "About the ND Gopher"
directory. I'll leave them there for a few days. These documents
are the text of what you would see if you queried the help system on
either of these servers.
If there are other questions, perhaps they can come directly to me
and not to this list since this _is_ supposed to be about Gopher
stuff. :-)
Joel
---
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joel P. Cooper Phone: 219-239-7221
Asst. Director, Networking Services Fax: 219-239-8201
Office of University Computing Email: coo...@utopia.cc.nd.edu
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
"Gentlemen! You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Daniel A. Torrey
>Several people wonder out loud:
>
>> Excuse me for not knowing, but what is CSO?
>
>"What is CSO" (short)
>
>CSO (evidently shortened from "CCSO" at U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
>their computing services organization) is an electronic directory
Blah, blah, blah...can we keep the gopher-news group on the topic of news
about gopher?
---
Daniel A. Torrey
CIS/DSP University of Minnesota
dan...@boombox.micro.umn.edu
(612) 626-8663
David Giller
>On Thu, 29 Oct 92 14:07:27 EST, <coo...@utopia.cc.nd.edu> wrote:
>>Several people wonder out loud:
>>> Excuse me for not knowing, but what is CSO?
>>
>>"What is CSO" (short)
>>
>>CSO (evidently shortened from "CCSO" at U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
>>their computing services organization) is an electronic directory
>
>Blah, blah, blah...can we keep the gopher-news group on the topic of news
>about gopher?
Whoa there, take a pill... CSO is perfectly relevant to gopher. CSO
is one of the search mechanisms built into gopher. If you want to set
up phone book searches in gopher, CSO seems to be the method of
choice.
Before you get all fired up to flame, back off and at least see if you
know what you are talking about.
-Dave
--
David Giller, Box 134 | Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light
Occidental College | bulb? A: Three. One to replace the bulb, and two to
1600 Campus Road | fend off all the Californians trying to share the
Los Angeles, CA 90041 | experience. ---------------------------rafe...@oxy.edu
Andreas Karrer
>On Thu, 29 Oct 92 14:07:27 EST, <coo...@utopia.cc.nd.edu> wrote:
>>"What is CSO" (short)
>>
>>CSO (evidently shortened from "CCSO" at U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
>>their computing services organization) is an electronic directory
>Blah, blah, blah... [...]
Not just "Blah, blah, blah".
Gopher is a simple, easy-to-implement, probably kludgy, but certainly
efficient way to connect the numerous existing CSO/qi/ph servers to the
Internet. qi servers -- until gopher started to dig holes in people's
minds -- were bound to the organization they serve. With gopher, I can
readily find the address/phone-#/e-mail address of people I worked
with in Texas some years back. So can they.
That is basically what the X.500 people have been promising us for
years. There is one difference: Gopher works; X.500 works sometimes.
No religion wars! No Flames! We run a gopher server, qi server, _and_
an X.500 server. Thank you.
+-----------
Andi Karrer, Communication Systems, ETH Zuerich, Switzerland
kar...@bernina.ethz.ch - Objects in mirror are closer than they appear
Lynn Ward
>Several people wonder out loud:
>> Excuse me for not knowing, but what is CSO?
>"What is CSO" (short)
>CSO (evidently shortened from "CCSO" at U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
>their computing services organization) is an electronic directory
>service, a queryable database containing information about people and
>things. Lots of universities and organizations have set up CSO
>nameservers and loaded them up with student, faculty, and staff
>public information (things like e-mail address, campus address and
>phone, and things like that.
>When you search some electronic phonebooks using Gopher, you are
>using CSO--the <phonebook> or (CSO) or "P" or little phonebook icon
>is the visual cue that you are dealing with a CSO nameserver.
>You may have heard/read about "ph" and "qi" in addition to CSO. They
>are all parts of the same system. Ph is the client software that
>does the querying. Qi is the server side.
CSO is actually a misnomer. Outside of Gopher, nobody refers to "ph
Nameservers" as "CSO's." In fact, here at the University of Illinois, where
the program was originally developed by Steven Dorner, all references to "CSO"
have been changed to CCSO in the written documentation and online help. The
term CCSO Nameserver refers specifically to the implementation of the qi/ph
programs here at the U of I, which are managed by our Computing and Com-
munications Services Office. The rest of the world generally refers to the
program as "ph". In fact there is a newsgroup for maintainers of ph databases
called info.ph (not info.cso). I don't know why the Gopher folks decided to
call these directories "CSO's", but PH or Ph Servers would be more appropriate.
--
_________________________________________
Lynn Ward l-w...@uiuc.edu
Network Design Office, 1541 DCL
244-0681