Distributed-application development tools for DCE/OSF

Abstract

DCE/OSF (Distributed Computing Environment by the Open Software Foundation) offers a comprehensive remote procedure call (RPC) based solution for the development of open distributed applications across a network of heterogeneous multiple-vendor machines. However, even simple DCE applications may have a rather complicated structure, requiring good understanding of the elaborate DCE technology. In this paper, we examine the DCE application development path, and introduce two new tools, idlgen and gluegen (collectively called MakeDCE), which help to separate application logic from DCE aspects. The development of simple DCE applications using idlgen and gluegen remains a rather simple task, requiring very little knowledge of DCE, and of the DCE toolkit. These tools are particularly useful for splitting existing monolithic programs into clients and servers, with almost no change to the original application code. Complex DCE applications are supported as well, even though the splitting approach may not be fully applicable.<>