You can manage user accounts and groups in Rational® DOORS®,
or you can use the Rational Directory
Server. Whichever solution you choose, take time to plan your user
accounts and the naming conventions you want to use for users and
groups. If naming conventions are followed consistently, it is easier
to manage users and groups, and to manage access controls on data.
Usually, it is best to set up a separate account for each user
of your Rational DOORS database. Do not allow different
people to share the same user name, or you will not know who made
what changes to your data. If a user must modify data, create an account
for them, even if they only need it for a few days.
An exception to this rule is if you want to set up a guest account
for people who need short-term, read-only access to your data.
Setting up access rights for individual users can be time-consuming.
Use groups to save time when you set up access rights for your data.
Bear in mind that each user can be in several groups. There is
no limit to the number of groups you can have, or the number of groups
that each user can be in.
Naming conventions
Although you can change
a user name at any time, Rational DOORS does not record this information.
For example, if you change a user name from John to John Smith, you
cannot tell whether John Smith is a brand new user or an existing
user whose user name has changed.
When planning user names and
group names, bear in mind these points:
- Each user name and group name must be unique.
- User names and group names can contain alphanumeric characters
(letters of the alphabet and numbers), space characters, and punctuation
characters.
- User names and group names are case-sensitive. The names Test
Boston and TEST Boston are different.
- User names are used throughout Rational DOORS to identify users, for example
in access rights lists and history records. Using the given name of
the user as their user name makes it easy to identify them. For example,
the user name John Smith (UK Sales) is less
ambiguous than John.
- All Rational DOORS screens that list user names
and group names list them in alphabetic order. Users are listed together
first, and then groups are listed. Think about how you want names
to be listed in your database. For example, if you have groups called
Tokyo Engineering, Tokyo Test, Boston Engineering, and Boston Test,
the Tokyo groups are listed together and the Boston groups are listed
together. If you would rather see all the Engineering groups together,
call your groups Engineering Boston and Engineering Tokyo.
- Unless the database is configured to use system user names, users
must remember their user name and type it when they log in to Rational DOORS.