"Distributed Computing Environment: Understanding the Issues in Adopting DCE,"
Brad C. Johnson, SystemExperts Corporation, 1995, 23 pp.

Brad was an original member of the OSF DCE Request For Technology (RFT) evaluation team and the project lead for the first three major releases of DCE.

This abstract is not for redistribution, any use of it must include any and all reference (bibliography) information, and all rights are owned by SystemExperts Corporation.

Abstract

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) from the Open Software Foundation (OSF) is going to make it into the mainstream end-user community. Despite the fact that many standards have never come to fruition, it is, in all likelihood, a fact that the DCE will become an important part of the Open Systems market. DCE is the type of infrastructure that can propel many organizations and applications squarely into the forefront of the diverse and large scale distributed systems environment.

DCE is a sophisticated set of services that offers the opportunity to develop coherent and scalable production quality applications in a distributed (Open) systems environment. However, because DCE is a new generation of distributed services, it requires a considerable degree of expertise to appreciate and manage.

Because DCE is a sophisticated and new brand of technology, many consumers develop a phased approach to adopting the features and services that DCE offers. This document serves as a vehicle to describe the issues involved in adopting the DCE technologies:

• What are the key interoperability issues
• What are the implications to the operations/administration organization
• What are the major areas of concern for each of the DCE components
• What are the key issues in development, deployment, and maintenance of DCE based applications

In addition, we discuss some of the complex and confusing issues surrounding DCE compliance and interoperability. Finally, we offer some open issues and questions that need to be addressed to fully appreciate, plan for, and utilize the DCE services. Let's start by taking a high level view of the contents and usefulness of DCE.

Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Components
• Release Information
• Compliance and Interoperability
  • Interoperability
  • Compliance
  • Management Implications
  • Component Implications
  • ISV Application Implications
• Usage
  • Development
  • Deployment
  • Maintenance
• Summary
• About the author
• Appendix 1: Migration and Integration Issues and Questions
  • General
  • Objects and Services: Naming Services
  • Messages and Events: Time Service
  • Development: RPC Service
  • Resources: Security Services
  • Management Services