Distributed Name Service (DNS) Management Operations Manual

Interfaces to the DNS Database
Introducing Distributed Name Service
31258 Tandem Computers Incorporated 1–7
Retrieving an alias. An application might obtain a subsystem-object name from an
event message, pass that name to DNS, and retrieve from DNS an alias to use in
reporting the event to users at terminals, as shown in Figure 1-3.
Figure 1-3. Retrieving an Alias
$TAPE1
User application displays
message, including
user-friendly alias.
4
DNS returns alias.
3
Management application sends
subsystem object name to DNS.
2
Event distributor
reports event to
user application.
1
PRIMARY DRIVE
DNS
Event
Distributor
Event
Collector
Management
Application
S8121-003
Requests to DNS for action or information, whether issued by users of DNSCOM or
applications through the Subsystem Programmatic Interface (SPI), are issued through
commands. They are conveyed internally as one or more interprocessor messages.
Interfaces to the DNS
Database
DNS has three interfaces: an interactive interface, a programmatic interface, and a
query interface.
DNSCOM, the interactive interface of the DNS subsystem and a major component of
DNS, is discussed later in this section under “DNS Architecture.” Also see Section 6,
“Using DNSCOM,” for more details about DNSCOM.
As mentioned earlier, DNS has a programmatic interface based on SPI. This interface
facilitates the integration of applications with DNS as shown in Figure 1-4.
Management application processes issue commands to the name manager process. If
necessary, the name manager communicates with the name exporter to carry out a
command. The DNS programmatic interface is presented in the Distributed Name
Service (DNS) Management Programming Manual.