OSF DCE Application Development Guide--Core Components

OSF DCE Application Development Guide—Core Components
For servers that advertise resources in server entries, groups often use subsets for
server entries according to the resources they advertise. For example, print
servers can be grouped according to supported file formats. In this case, an
administrator creates a group entry for each file format; for example,
post_printers, sixel_printers, and ascii_printers. Each print server entry is a
member of one or more groups.
Users that specify a group for a file format must find the printer that processes the
print command. To help the user find the printer, the client can obtain the name of
the server entry that supplied the server binding information by calling
rpc_ns_binding_inq_entry_name( ), and then display the name for the user. If
the server entry name indicates the location of the print server (for example,
floor_3_room_45A_print_server), the user can then find the printer.
An application can set up groups according to different factors for different purposes.
For example, the print server application can set up groups of neighboring print
servers and a group of print servers for each of the file formats. The same server is a
member of at least one group of each kind. Clients require users to specify the name
of a directory service entry as a command-line argument of remote print commands.
The user specifies the name of the appropriate group.
Note: If a user wants a specific print server and knows the name of its server
entry, the user can specify that name to the client instead of a group.
14.3.3.3 Using Profiles
Profiles are tools for managing NSI searches (performed by import_next or
lookup_next operations). Often profiles are set up as public profiles for the users of a
particular environment, such as a directory service cell, a system, a specific
application, or an organization. For example, the administrator of the local directory
service cell should set up a cell profile for all RPC applications that use the cell, and
the administrator of each system in the distributed computing environment should set
up a system profile for local servers.
For each application, a directory service administrator or the owner of an application
should add profile elements to the public profiles that serve the general user
population; for example, a cell profile, a system profile, or a profile of an organization.
Each profile element associates a profile member (represented in the member field of
an element as the global name of a directory service entry) with an interface
identifier, access priority, and optional annotation. A candidate for membership in a
cell profile is a group or another profile; for example, a group that refers, directly or
indirectly, to the servers of an application installed in the local cell or an application-
specific profile.
An application may benefit from an application-specific profile. For example, an
administrator at a specific location, such as a company’s regional headquarters, can
assign priorities to profile elements based on the proximity of servers to the
headquarters, as illustrated by Figure 14-13.
Figure 14-13. Priorities Assigned on Proximity of Members
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