PH QUERIES                      Penn State Center for Academic Computing
                                                                10/21/93
 
PH (short for PHone) is a system for accessing a database containing
data from the Penn State telephone books.  The E-mail clients (Eudora,
NUPop) and Gopher clients supported by the CAC provide mechanisms for
looking up entries.  The PH client for the Macintosh can be used to both
query the database and change your entry.  These notes describes methods
of formulating PH queries using these clients.  See other CAC documents
for information about updating your entry and about mail forwarding.
 
 
HOW TO START
 
Use the utility you find most convenient.  If you are in a mail client,
then you can do the query from there.  If not, you might want to start
your Gopher client.  If using Gopher: from the main menu of the PSU
server at "info.psu.edu", pick "Penn State phone directory", then
"Penn State telephone directory lookup".
 
The mail clients have PH interfaces in different locations:
   NUPop      -- in the Utilities menu, pick PH (or Finger)
   PC Eudora  -- the PH item is under the Special menu in version 1.1,
                 but under the Windows menu in newer versions
   Mac Eudora -- the PH item is under the Special menu.
 
 
BASIC PH QUERIES
 
Most applications provide only a single box to enter a query string.
Start by entering the the last name, or first and last name, of the
person you wish to find.  If you enter a string such as "Steven Schrader"
(without the quotes) you will see something like this:
 
         102:There was 1 match to your request.
   ------------------------------------------------------------
                     name: Schrader, Steven A
                    alias: sxs
                    email: sxs@email.psu.edu
                    phone: +1 814 863 7537
                  address: 225 COMPUTER BUILDING
                         : UNIVERSITY PARK, PA 16802
                   campus: University Park
               department: Computer and Information Systems
                    title: MCRCOMP SYS CONSLT
   ------------------------------------------------------------
         200:Ok.
 
Note that you don't have to worry about upper or lower case letters;
using either is ok.
 
 
LIMITING YOUR SEARCHES
 
The PH server currently returns up to 200 names from a query.  If there
are more matches than this, PH will return the message "Too many entries
to print" and you will have to narrow the search criteria.  Even if there
were less then 200 "hits", there may be too many to browse through, and
you may wish to narrow the search criteria by specifying more of the name
or additional search "fields".
 
 
FIRST AND MIDDLE NAMES
 
The person's first name and middle names can be used to narrow the
search.  For example, "ALAN WILLIAMS" finds two entries, and "ALAN LEE
WILLIAMS" finds just one.  The order of names doesn't matter -- "LEE ALAN
WILLIAMS" is the same, but don't use punctuation like "Williams, Alan",
even though that is how names are displayed.  The system matches "words"
-- strings delimited by blanks, so you have to know exactly what the
first name is.  For example, "AL WILLIAMS" finds no entries; see the next
section on how to use "AL* WILLIAMS".
 
 
WILDCARD CHARACTERS, ? and *
 
Although PH matches whole words only, there are two special characters or
"wildcards": "?" and "*".  The question mark can be used in place of a
single unknown character.  For example, if you didn't know a name was
spelled Schreder or Schrader, a query with "Schr?der" would find entries
with both spellings.
 
The asterisk widens the search by matching zero, one, or more characters.
For example, "Schr*der" would also find names like "Schroeder".  The
asterisk is also useful in matching nick names, for example "AL*
WILLIAMS".
 
 
ADDITIONAL FIELDS -- "MODIFIERS"
 
Many of the additional "fields" (pieces of data) in the database can be
used to narrow down a search.
 
For example, a search for just "Williams" results in too many entries,
but you know the Williams you want works for the Center for Academic
Computing, Computer and Information Systems, you could try the following:
 
     williams department=computer
 
Modifiers follow a primary field (at the time of this writing, one of:
name, nickname, alias, email, or Kerberos) in the form of
 
     fieldname=string
 
The string may also include wild-card characters.  Some of the fields
useful for modifying a search are department (which is really
"administrative unit", and not stored for students), campus, nickname,
alias, campus, curriculum, and address.  For example:
 
     williams address=computer
     williams campus=erie
     williams campus="unversity park" title=undergrad
     williams campus=harrisburg title=grad
     williams curriculum=bdcom
 
Note that fields can be matched by a single word that is in the field, or
by an exact match by putting the search string in quotes.  For example,
giving a campus string such as "Penn State Erie" doesn't work because
that location is stored as "Penn State Erie, The Behrend College".  It is
easier to use one word, such as "Erie" or "Behrend".
 
The "curriculum" field is stored for students, and is the official
abbreviation for the course of study the student is enrolled in.
 
 
NAME UNKNOWN
 
If, for example, you get e-mail from someone containing only their
userid and no name, look them up with a query like:
 
             alias=cjs
 
Unless the user changed it, the "alias" is their access account userid.
If they've changed their alias, the "kerberos" field has their original
account userid.
 
 
MORE INFORMATION
 
Many things have not been explained here.  For more information, see
other CAC documents (which we'll list here when we have them).