OSF DCE Application Development Guide--Core Components

OSF DCE Application Development Guide—Core Components
applications to manipulate string representations of binding information (string
bindings).
13.1.2 Basic Operations of the NSI
The NSI routines perform operations on a namespace for RPC applications. The
fundamental operations include the following:
• Creating and deleting entries in namespaces
• Exporting
A server uses the NSI export operation to place binding information associated with
its RPC interfaces and objects into the namespace used by the RPC application.
• Importing
Clients can search for exported binding information associated with an interface and
object by using the NSI import operation or lookup operation. These two operations
are collectively referred to as the NSI search operations.
• Unexporting
The unexport operation enables a server to remove some or all of its binding
information from a server entry.
• Managing information in a namespace
Applications use the NSI interface to place information about server entries into a
namespace and to inquire about and manage that information.
13.1.3 Basic Operations of Authenticated RPCs
The authenticated RPC routines provide a mechanism for establishing secure
communications between clients and servers.
To engage in authenticated RPC, a client and server must agree on the authentication
service to be used. The server’s responsibility is to register its principal name and the
authentication service to be supported with the RPC runtime. The client’s responsibility
is to establish the authentication service, a given protection level, and an authorization
service for the server binding handle. The protection level determines the degree of
protection applied to individual messages between the client and server. The
authorization service determines the form in which the client’s credentials will be
presented to the server (for access checking).
Once authenticated RPC has been established between a client and server, the client
issues remote procedure calls in the usual fashion, with all authentication and protection
being handled by the DCE Security Service and the RPC runtime.
Table 13-1 relates several of the RPC runtime operations just discussed with specific
routines or sets of routines.
13 − 2 Tandem Computers Incorporated 124245