OSF DCE Application Development Guide--Core Components

Chapter 19. Introduction to the Distributed Time
Service API
This chapter describes the DCE Distributed Time Service (DTS) programming routines.
You can use these routines to obtain timestamps that are based on Coordinated Universal
Time (UTC). You can also use the DTS routines to translate among different timestamp
formats and perform calculations on timestamps. Applications can use the timestamps
that DTS supplies to determine event sequencing, duration, and scheduling.
Applications can call the DTS routines from any host that has the libdce. The dtsd need
not be running.
DTS routines are written in the C programming language. You should be familiar with
basic DTS concepts before you attempt to use the application programming interface
(API). The DTS chapters of the
provide conceptual information about DTS.
The DTS API routines offer the following basic functions:
• Retrieving timestamp information
• Converting between binary timestamps that use different time structures
• Converting between binary timestamps and ASCII representations
• Converting between UTC time and local time
• Manipulating binary timestamps
• Comparing two binary time values
• Calculating binary time values
• Obtaining time zone information
The sections that follow describe how DTS represents time, discuss the DTS time
structures, discuss the DTS API header files, and briefly describe the DTS API routines.
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