OSF DCE Application Development Guide--Core Components

Chapter 1. Introduction to DCE Facilities

By now you are aware that DCE consists of a number of major components, each of

which addresses some necessary aspect of distributed computing: DCE Threads make

programs more efﬁcient by allowing parallel execution of portions of code, remote

procedure calls (RPCs) hide network details from applications, the DCE Time Service

gives consistent time to widely scattered cells and hosts, the DCE Security Service gives

programs assurances that users and other programs are who they say they are and that

they are authorized to do what they are supposed to do, and the DCE Directory Service

helps clients ﬁnd servers and other resources. For most applications, a DCE component

is not used by itself, but the components all work together to create a very useful and

powerful environment.

The more you understand DCE and its components, the more you’ll realize that a strict

division by component is not always clear. The document set for DCE is organized by

component mostly for the convenience of people trying to explain and understand DCE,

but applications often contain a blend of aspects of all the components. This is why it

often seems like the information you need to do your work is scattered across many

chapters or volumes, and why advanced or unusual features seem to be described along-

side basic or typical tasks. DCE also has some special facilities that just do not ﬁt neatly

into any one discussion of a DCE component, and these are the facilities we describe in

this ﬁrst part of the

You should read the

prior to using the DCE facilities described here, and you may want to skip to other parts

of this guide before learning details about the DCE facilities.

Most DCE facilities are already used by one or more major components of DCE to

accomplish some feature they require; others are standalone facilities intended to make

developing distributed applications easier. These facilities are described separately here

so that you can use them for your own applications too. The DCE facilities include the

following:

• Host Services

Host services give remote access to several kinds of data and functionality with

respect to each DCE host and its servers. Each host runs a DCE host daemon (dced)

as the interface to the host services. In many cases, dced automatically maintains the

data and performs the functions. Some of the data that you can access (and maintain)

remotely includes the host name, the host’s cell name, conﬁguration and execution

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