Every StreetTalk name consists of three parts: the name itself, the group to which this name belongs, and the organization of which this group is part. You specify a StreetTalk name when you add a user or resource to the network.
Network and group administrators create and manage all StreetTalk names, and are the only people who can modify names in the StreetTalk database.
Individual group administrators manage the groups in which they have administrative privileges as well as the resources that belong to those groups. Your name must be on a list called "AdminList" at the server or group level before you can add names to StreetTalk.
For each user or network resource that you define, the combination of item, group, and organization names must be unique. Uniqueness ensures that no one can confuse one user or resource with any other on the network. Coupled with a consistent and logical naming scheme, each resource can be precisely identified by its name alone.
For services such as the StreetTalk Naming service that Banyan system software creates automatically, the server name determines the uniqueness of the service name. The server's name becomes the second, or middle, position of the StreetTalk name of these services. For this reason, Banyan server names must be unique.
The following sections describe each part of the three-part StreetTalk name.
Item
Items include users (including their nicknames), services, and lists. StreetTalk gives you great flexibility in creating item names. However, you should create names that are easy for users to remember while remaining consistent with your naming scheme. For example, for Frederick A. Brooks, create the item name Fred Brooks if that is how people normally refer to him. Use middle initials when users have identical first and last names.
Group
Each item belongs to a larger unit called a group. Any number of items in any class can belong to the same group. A group usually includes several users, services, and lists. For example, a marketing department named mkt might include users, a file service, and a print service. All the items in a group have something in common - in the case of the preceding example, their association with the marketing department.
Select group names that describe why items are grouped together. Take advantage of StreetTalk's capacity to handle spaces between words in item and group names to build names that are more natural to users. Avoid using names like INTL_MAR_COM that use extensive acronyms and underlining. These names' meanings may be understood by current users, but they are not intuitive. They could confuse new users or cause unforeseen problems if your organization merges with another at a later date.
Regardless of the group names that you select, always make group names unique even if the groups are in different organizations. When StreetTalk or another service searches for a name, it searches for a group name. Unique group names facilitate the search.
You can make a group name unique by including part of its departmental, or organizational name. For example, if your company has two personnel departments and two organizations, with branches in Canada and the United States, name one group PERSONNEL CAN and the other PERSONNEL US.
Consider the following guidelines when you select the group to which a user should belong:
Each user should belong to a group that is maintained on a server with a direct LAN connection to the user's workstation. This approach yields better performance, especially for logins. In smaller networks with few users and groups, try to put users in the same group as the services they use most often. In larger networks with many very large groups, you may need to put related groups and users on more than one server and let more than one StreetTalk service manage them.
In addition, you can create up to two shadow groups, or replicas of the original group, and locate them on two alternate servers. For more information, see Chapter 5.
Note: A server can have a maximum of 50 groups-a number that includes any shadow groups-but the maximum number recommended depends on such factors as the services you run, how much attribute information the group maintains, how often users access the system, the number of groups on a server, as well as the amount of memory and type of hardware supported.
Organization
Each group belongs to an organization, the highest level of names on the network. Organizations consist of groups that are related. In many cases, an organizational name will correspond to the name of a business. Large companies can use organizational names to identify divisions.
Create organizations that are consistent with the overall structure of your company. A small company may need only one organization; larger companies may need more. If you plan StreetTalk services for a very large corporation, you may want to create organizations for major operating divisions. A multinational corporation, on the other hand, might use organization names to distinguish among its operating units in different countries.
Avoid generic names like "headquarters," "administration," or "regional branch." Use organization names that refer specifically to your company. This approach helps you maintain unique item and group names within them. You want unique names in the event that you connect your network to another network in the future.
Names are constructed by conceiving every user or resource as an item that belongs to a group, which, in turn, belongs to an organization.
The three parts of the name are separated by at-signs (@) and have the following maximum lengths:
Items - 31 characters Groups - 15 characters Organization - 15 characters
At-signs (@) can appear only as separators, never as a part of a name.
The total length of a StreetTalk name, including the at-signs, is limited to 63 characters.
The following name is a valid StreetTalk name for a user:
Herbert Trotman@Chicago Sales@WCTUS
The following name, is a valid name for a service, in this case a file service:
Finance Files@Finance@WCTUS
StreetTalk uses classes to categorize StreetTalk resources. Classes play an important part in the display of resource information to network users. For example, STDA displays information according to the class the StreetTalk resource belongs to. (Chapter 10 describes this.)
The five StreetTalk classes are shown below in Table 3-1.
| Class | Refers to... |
| Users | User names |
| Services | All services such as print, file, AFP, asynchronous, 3270 SNA, and Netbios |
| Lists | Lists of users, services, nicknames, and other lists |
| Nicknames | Aliases for StreetTalk users, services, and lists |
| Groups | StreetTalk groups that contain any or all of the above |
If your responsibilities include adding resources to the network, you must name those resources. The information in this section helps you create names that are easy to recognize and provide quick system response to users.
Administrators create and manage all StreetTalk names in VINES. Only administrators can add the names of new users to the StreetTalk database. By default, every StreetTalk group has at least one item, a list called "AdminList" that identifies group administrators. Group administrators manage both groups and the resources that belong to them. Your name must be on an AdminList before you can add names to StreetTalk.
The next sections tell you how to create StreetTalk names.
The following name is a valid StreetTalk name:
An at-sign (@) separates each part of the name from the next. At-signs can appear only as separators, never as a part of a name.
As another example,
Finance Files@Finance@WCTUS
is a valid name for a StreetTalk service, in this case a file service.
Administrators manage StreetTalk to control the naming of users and resources and the distribution of names to servers throughout the network. Choosing which StreetTalk groups to add and choosing what items they should contain are the most important ways that you use StreetTalk.
The sections that follow cover these aspects of planning for StreetTalk:
Creating unique names Naming items (users and services) Naming groups Naming organizations
Each section presents guidelines for designing a system that is responsive and easy to use.
It is important to stress that you must develop naming standards that apply to your entire organization.
For each user or network resource that you define, the combination of item, group, and organization names must be unique. The uniqueness ensures that no one can confuse one user or resource with any other. Each resource can be precisely identified by its name alone.
When you add an item, StreetTalk checks that the name you give it is unique. For example, StreetTalk lets you create only one organization with a given name, such as WCTUS. Similarly, it lets you can create only one group called Finance in the WCTUS organization and only one item named John H. Bennett in that group. Thus, only one John H. Bennett@Finance@WCTUS can be on the network.
For services, such as StreetTalk, that VINES creates automatically, the server name determines the uniqueness of these service names. The server's name becomes the second, or middle, position of the StreetTalk name of these services. Therefore, server names must be unique.
User names and service names (discussed in the next section) are item names. An item name can be a maximum of 31 characters. It can include letters, numbers, spaces, and other punctuation.
Macintosh
Note that a StreetTalk name (item-group-organization) for a Macintosh user cannot exceed 31 characters. See "StreetTalk Names for Macintosh Users" later in this chapter.
Guidelines
Create StreetTalk names that are unique. The easiest way to do this is to make each name unique at its own level:
Item names should be unique within groups. Group names should be unique within organizations. Organization names should be unique to networks or internetworks.
StreetTalk allows much flexibility in creating item names. However, you should create names that are easy for users to remember and recognize. For example, for Thomas Chang, create the item name Tom Chang if the name is unique and that is how people normally refer to him. To assure uniqueness, use full names including the middle initials or middle names.
Use a consistent naming scheme, especially if you have a large network with hundreds of users. For example, to be consistent, use a middle initial for all users even though the initial is not required for uniqueness. Such consistency will help the StreetTalk Directory Assistance service (described in Chapter 10) sort names more easily. Before you enter names, you should understand the sorting capabilities and requirements of STDA.
If your network has mainframes and minicomputers, consider letting users have their StreetTalk item names as logon IDs for these systems.
It is not recommended that you use numbers, such as employee identification numbers, as the only user names since people are known by their names rather than by numbers.
Plan your naming scheme carefully. Changing a name is easy after you have entered one, but changing many names in a very large network can be time-consuming.
In addition to a full StreetTalk name, users can have nicknames. Nicknames are described in Chapter 4.
StreetTalk Names for Macintosh Users
Limitations of the Macintosh Chooser restrict the length of StreetTalk names and passwords for Macintosh users. Therefore, when creating StreetTalk names and passwords for Macintosh users, follow these rules:
StreetTalk names must total 31 characters or less (that is, item, group, organization, and @ signs). Passwords must be 8 characters or less. If a user enters a StreetTalk name in the Chooser that is longer than 31 characters, that user will not be able to log in.
If an existing StreetTalk user's name is longer than 31 characters, create a short nickname (31 characters or less) for that person to use when logging in to VINES from a Macintosh.
Valid Characters in a StreetTalk Name
When creating a StreetTalk name for an item, group, or organization, you can use the following 7-bit ASCII characters:
Standard alphanumeric characters A through Z, a through z, and 0 through 9. Non-alphanumeric characters such as the period, comma, space, and dash.
In addition, item names can contain 8-bit characters that include accents, diacritical marks (for example, a circumflex), and other special characters for language-specific characters. These 8-bit characters are part of a character set known as the PC multinational character set.Any character that you enter from your keyboard can be stored and displayed on a workstation screen by VINES. Names for servers, groups (the second part of a StreetTalk name), and organizations (the third part of a StreetTalk name) cannot contain PC multinational 8-bit characters.
The following examples are valid StreetTalk names:
Thomas M. Chang@MrktRes@WCTUS
Michèle@Sales@Corp
The è in Michèle (a nickname) is an 8-bit character.
Latin 1 Character Set
StreetTalk services, including STDA, support a subset of characters from the Latin 1 character set for defining StreetTalk item, group, and organization names. Many client workstations using operating systems such as DOS, Microsoft Windows, and Macintosh use proprietary character sets based on, but not identical to, the Latin 1 set. Because of this similarity, Banyan software translates workstation character sets into their Latin 1 equivalents for use by StreetTalk services. Some workstations also have country-specific code tables that contain special characters. These characters are also converted into Latin 1 for use by StreetTalk services.
Table 3-2 shows the Latin 1 character set. A blank space in the table indicates that the system software does not support the equivalent character in a StreetTalk item name.
Example Illustration of Unsupported Characters
The space that indicates 42 decimal (row 10 + column 32) is blank because it is an asterisk (*), and asterisks are not valid characters in a StreetTalk item name.
DOS
The decimal value of a character on a DOS workstation is the sum of its row and column entries.
Example ASCII Character Mapping
The value for "%" is 37 (row 5 + column 32). The value for "à" is 133 (row 5 + column 128).
Use the decimal value to enter a character in a PC-compatible workstation or in an ASCII file when the character is not on your keyboard.
You can enter a character in a PC-compatible workstation by holding down the ALT key as you enter the number in the numeric keypad and then releasing the ALT key.
Valid Item, Group, and Organization Names
Any character that you enter from your keyboard can be stored and displayed on a workstation screen. Names for servers, groups (the second part of a StreetTalk name), and organizations (the third part of a StreetTalk name) cannot contain Latin 1 8-bit characters; item names can.
Valid 7-bit ASCII characters that can be used for groups, organizations and items names are listed in Table 3-3.
| Type | Valid Characters |
| Digits | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 |
| Lower case | a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z |
| Upper case | A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
| Punctuation | % # ! ( ) + ; , - ^ | ~ . - |
Character Conversion
StreetTalk stores standard and special alphanumeric characters but treats them as equivalent when it searches for them. For example, all variations on the letter "e" are the same when StreetTalk searches for a name that has an "e." StreetTalk distinguishes among E, e, É , é , è , and ë when stored but not when searched for. Thus the StreetTalk name Michèle@Ventes@WCTCA is equivalent to the StreetTalk name Michele@Ventes@WCTCA.
For your convenience, StreetTalk ignores the difference between upper-case and lower-case letters. Thomas M. Chang is the same as thomas m. chang. When StreetTalk displays an item name, it uses the case you specified when you added that item.
Example Character Conversion for Display
The StreetTalk name Michèle@Ventes@WCTBE is equivalent to the StreetTalk name Michele@Ventes@WCTBE when used to access StreetTalk information in STDA client applications.
StreetTalk does not let you enter two names with identical character equivalents. For instance, if you enter the name Dieter Müller you cannot also add the name Dieter Muller to any StreetTalk database on your network. This limitation is designed to prevent naming conflicts in client programs that are not designed to handle international characters.
StreetTalk ignores the difference between upper-case and lower-case letters. To StreetTalk, Herbert A. Trotman is the same as herbert a. trotman. When StreetTalk displays an item name, it uses the case you specified when you added that item.
StreetTalk has a search function that makes it easy for you to find network items by name. You can display all the user names in any group or in any organization. For services, you can display all those of a certain type, such as file services or those maintained on a given server.
However, if you are unsure of how to find an item or spell its name, a special feature allows you to use StreetTalk pattern-matching. The next section explains how patterns work.
The STDA service also lets you search for the names of users, lists, and services in a network. STDA, which extends the features of the StreetTalk service, is optimized for retrieving names. STDA sorts the names in a copy of the StreetTalk database so that they can be retrieved quickly.
See Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 for more information on STDA services, which you must create and configure.
When you choose this search option, the system displays a screen on which you can type a pattern for StreetTalk to match in its search for names.
You use an asterisk (*) in the search pattern as a wildcard character. The asterisk tells the system to search for and display names that have any number of characters in the same position as the asterisk, including no characters.
The asterisk in StreetTalk works as it does in DOS file names. However, with StreetTalk you can put more than one asterisk in the search pattern. When the system replaces an asterisk with characters, it ignores the difference between upper-case and lower-case letters.
Example Searching for a Pattern
If you type the following pattern:
*@Sales@WCTUS
the system searches for and displays all items in the group Sales@WCTUS.
In this pattern:
BE*@Sales@*
the system searches for and displays all items that begin with the letters BE, in any group called SALES, in all organizations on the network.
