T E C H   R E P O R T S

New Communications and Data Management SIG report

New organization for new times . . .

Hartmut Fichtel, chair of the new Communications & & Data Management SIG

by Hartmut Fichtel The 1998 annual Cray User Group Meeting took place in the German town of Stuttgart, the capital of the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, and also the home of (calculating) engines of various speeds and types. Not the least impressive engine examples could be viewed during the night out at Daimler's Automobile Museum featuring classical exemplars from the very origin of automotive fabrication up to just yesterday. As to be expected, Walter Wehinger and his talented local arrangements crew ran an extremely well organized and smoothly running conference in downtown Stuttgart. They even fixed the weather! New organization for new times Those of you not being able to attend this conference should by now be surprised by the title of this column. What is this all about communication and data management ? To improve CUG's technical program, the CUG SIGs were reorganized during the Stuttgart meeting to improve the technical program, increase SIG efficiency and flexibility, and allow greater influence from CUG members. (For details on the restructuring, see "CUG SIGs get a facelift" and A guide to the new CUG SIGs.") Under the new organization, the old Networking and Mass Storage Systems SIGs reside under the umbrella of the Communication and Data Management "super" SIG. The chair of the Networking Focus Group remains our old work horse Hans Mandt from Boeing Corporation, so nothing really has changed here. The chair of the Mass Storage Systems (or data management) Focus Group had been vacant until at the end of this conference Jeff Terstriep from NCSA (University of Illinois) has agreed to take over this position. Topical area of the new SIG The last remark with respect to the restructuring I want to make at this time is to give you the key words defining the topical area of this new SIG: Networking hardware and software, performance and security, 3rd party suppliers Mass storage hardware and software, performance, vendor packages - data management, data warehousing I/O devices including disks and tapes, interaction with Cray Research packages This list might not necessarily be complete, but it should give the flavor of technical interests and its separation from the four other groups in operation. If you think that within the framework of this SIG there is sufficient technical interest (and driving force) justifying a separate Focus Group, you will find it much easier to set up than it used to be. Please contact me in this case. Interim terms for group chairs The CUG board of directors has decided to appoint the current five SIG chairs only for an interim period of one year -- that is, until the next meeting on May 24-28, 1999, hosted by Network Computing Services in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. From then on, as the Future of CUG Committee has proposed, the chair will be elected by the membership during an open meeting (and ratified by the board). The same will be true for the Focus Group chairs. I hope this new procedure will result in a more transparent and democratic way to fill the committee positions. CUG needs you! As a last remark, please participate in the preparation of the technical conferences by sending in suggestions for topics and talks, comments and critical arguments, questions or whatever. It may sound repetitive (and it is), but we need your input to assemble a program which you can find useful and informative. Thanks for your participation. See you in Minneapolis 1999.

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