The Alias service supports the mapping of alias strings to a target. This is useful when things like sites have a long, cryptic name (such as a GUID).
For example, a Sakai alias can be used instead of the site id when emailing to the site test@sakai.edu rather than 6ade75f9-aeef-4338-80ae-62e391045975@sakai.edu.
It can also be used in place of the site id for access URLs, such as /access/content/group/test instead of /access/content/group/6ade75f9-aeef-4338-80ae-62e391045975.
The Aliases admin tool provides methods to get the target of aliases in the system, create new ones, edit them and delete them.