Ward Rosenberry Knihy

The Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) stands as today's most broadly accepted and most ambitious effort to link diverse computers into a single, productive network. This book provides a bigger picture look at DCE, along with a detailed technical overview of this complex software system. The focus is on the kind of understanding that prepares readers to do things. Topics addressed include overall architecture, threads, RPC, directory services, and security. Includes guidelines for setting up and configuring DCE cells

"Microsoft RPC interoperates with DCE RPC"...that's what you hear in the trade press. But how far does "interoperability" go? What can you really accomplish with the compatibilities between Microsoft platforms and DCE? Distributing Applications Across DCE and Windows NT from O'Reilly & Associates provides the answer. It proves that applications can indeed cross platform boundaries, and shows how to do it. The book gives steps for writing a simple, portable application and lists the complete differences between RPC support in the two environments. The programming examples share data processing across UNIX systems hosting DCE, workstations or PCs hosting Windows NT, and PCs hosting MS-DOS with or without 16-bit Windows.The book also has material for decision-makers and site administrators. Its first chapter discusses general industry problems and compares the distributed access offered by DCE/Microsoft RPC with other common solutions. Site administrators will benefit from another chapter showing how to set up configuration files to handle cross-environment applications.Topics

Understanding DCE is a technical and conceptual overview of OSF's Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) for programmers, technical managers, and marketing and sales people. Unlike many O'Reilly & Associates books, Understanding DCE has no hands-on programming elements. Instead, the book focuses on how DCE can be used to accomplish typical programming tasks and provides explanations to help the reader understand all the parts of DCE.Contents