OSF DCE Application Development Guide--Introduction and Style Guide

Introduction to DCE Application Programming
1.3 DCE Application Development Tools
The following DCE tools allow developers to define and manage a set of programs
intended to run in a DCE environment.
• Unique identification
Because DCE involves the interaction of many distinct programs, operating on
several processors that may be quite remote from each other, every entity (such as
programs, interface definitions, and so forth) needs a unique identifier. This identifier
is provided by the UUID generator.
• Interface definition language
Applications programs that are to work within DCE can be written in any of several
programming languages. The two halves of a client/server pair need not be in the
same language. In order to permit this flexibility, each application’s client/server
interface uses a common language, called IDL. It is supported by an IDL Compiler.
• Attribute configuration language
To allow developers to control the interface between local applications code and the
RPC interface, there is an optional attribute configuration language supported by the
IDL compiler.
• Remote DCE management
A host daemon (dced) and a control program (dcecp) provide capabilities for
management of a host and its servers.
1.3.1 The DCE UUID Generator
The UUID generator uuidgen is an interactive utility that creates UUIDs (universal
unique identifiers). A UUID is a hexadecimal number that contains information that
makes it unique from all other UUIDs. Applications use UUIDs to identify many kinds
of entities, including interface definitions. Consequently, application developers
typically use the UUID generator when they are creating their interface definition files.
To run the UUID generator, issue the uuidgen command. This command offers several
options, including an option to create a template interface definition file (an .idl file)
containing a newly generated interface UUID. For complete information about
generating UUIDs and template interface definition files, see the . See this volume also
for a discussion of UUIDs and their use in DCE applications. Refer to the
uuidgen(1rpc) reference page for a description of the uuidgen utility and its options.
124246 Tandem Computers Incorporated 1−5