OSF DCE Application Development Guide--Core Components

RPC and Other DCE Components
Applications that use a separate entry for each object UUID need to use groups
cautiously. Keeping groups small when clients are requesting a specific object is
essential because an NSI search looks up the group members in random order.
Therefore, the members of a group form a localized flat NSI search path rather than
the hierarchical path. Flat search paths are inefficient because the average search
will look at half the members. Small groups are not a problem. For example, if a
group contains only 4 members, each of whom refers to a server entry that advertises
a distinct set of RPC resources, the average number of server entries accessed in
each search is 2 entries and the maximum is only 4. The larger the group, however,
the more inefficient the resulting search path. For example, for a group containing
12 members, each of whom refers to a server entry that advertises a distinct set of
object UUIDs, the average search accesses 6 entries and some searches access all 12
server entries.
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