Distributed Name Service (DNS) Management Operations Manual

Glossary
Glossary–6 31258 Tandem Computers Incorporated
exporter process. A DNS process that manages the time-staged replication of name
definitions on remote nodes. This process is not a NonStop process pair.
format. The organization (relative or absolute positions of elements) in a symbolic
representation. In DNS, the attribute of a subsystem-object type that describes the
constraints on names for objects of that type.
File Utility Program (FUP). The Tandem interactive utility that lets you perform a variety
of operations on files.
FUP. See File Utility Program.
group. A set of names defined to DNS; a collection of objects called by a common alias.
For instance, the group SEATTLE_TERMINALS might actually refer to all terminals in
Seattle—\SEATAC.$TERM1, \SEATAC.$TERM2, \STORMY.$TERM3, and so forth.
Further examples are all lines to New York or all terminals that are to be active from 9
AM to 5 PM. The objects in a particular group need not be of the same type.
group name. The name selected by the user to identify a group in DNS.
Guardian name. The name by which the Guardian 90 operating system recognizes a
process or code file. Such names are really addresses that are not independent of
network location.
information command. A command that retrieves information about an object but does
not act on the object or change it in any way. Compare action command.
initialization Time Stamp. The time when a DNS configuration on a node was last
intitialized. This time is node-specific.
initialize. To prepare a data structure to have values assigned to it. For example, the
SPI SSINIT procedure initializes the buffer by building the message header; the
SSNULL procedure initializes an extensible structured token by assigning null values
to the fields of the structure.
interprocessor message. The data one process sends to another with a single file system
or message system call.
ITS. See Initialization Time Stamp.
macro. A sequence of TACL commands and built-in functions that can contain dummy
arguments, thus providing a means for simple argument substitution. No validity
checking of the arguments is performed. When the macro name is given to TACL,
TACL substitutes the expansion of the command sequence for the name, replacing any
dummy arguments with parameter values supplied in the invocation. Compare
routine.
management application. A program or set of programs that issues commands to
subsystems, retrieves event messages, or does both things, to assist in managing a
computer system or a network of systems. A management application is a requester
with respect to the subsystems to which it sends commands; the subsystems are
servers with respect to the management application.