Distributed Name Service (DNS) Management Programming Manual

Glossary
46958 Tandem Computers Incorporated Glossary–1
This glossary defines technical terms that are used in this manual. Some of these terms
are also defined in the Distributed Systems Management (DSM) Programming Manual.
Action command. A command that results in action on an object, as opposed to retrieval
of information. Compare with Information command.
Address. The location of something in memory, in a system, or in a network.
Alias. Any name the user can enter to identify an object. In the context of DNS, every
alias corresponds to a particular subsystem-object name recognized by some
subsystem or by the Guardian 90 operating system. Support for aliases permits
management applications to accept an alias in a command and use DNS to translate it
into the proper subsystem-object name.
Aliases can simplify the way in which a user refers to an object. For instance, a
terminal with the subsystem-object name TERM23 under \BRONX.$PM could be
configured for reference by the alias MYTERM; the program $SYSTEM.SYSTEM.FUP
could be referred to simply as FUP.
Alias type. An attribute that may optionally be associated with an alias to distinguish it
from other aliases that refer to the same object. The alias type is defined and assigned
by the user.
Alias-type name. A name assigned by the user to identify an alias type; an
externalization of the owner . alias type number construct. As an example, if a
user of DNS wishes to define the telephone company circuit number as an alias for a
communication line, an appropriate name for the alias type might be CIRCUIT.
Alias-type number. In DNS, an integer used to identify an alias type within the context
of the owner of the type. The owner . alias type number pair always provides a
unique identifier for the alias type that is independent of the alias-type name assigned
by a particular company. Developers of management applications may always use the
owner . type number pair to refer internally to the alias type; DNS provides a
programmatic command for translating the pair to the type name, and vice versa. This
approach assures portability for management applications without concern for alias-
type name conflicts.
Asynchronous command abort. A programmatic action taken to cancel a command in
progress. For example, an application might react to a BREAK command on the
terminal by aborting the last command the operator issued.
Attribute. A characteristic of an entity. For example, two attributes of a DNS alias are
an alias type and domain. Two attributes of a communications line might be its baud
rate and its retry count.
In a token-oriented interface based on SPI, an attribute of an object is usually
expressed as a simple token or a field within an extensible structured token. The
attributes of a token are its length, count, address, and offset; programs can obtain
these through special SSGET operations.
Attribute list. A list of more than one attribute that is associated with a name.