[100] in Open-Software-Foundation-News
Notes from DCE Naming Workgroup Meeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (emartin@apollo.hp.com)
Wed Dec 7 18:05:49 1994
Resent-From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Resent-To: osf-news-mtg@menelaus.LOCAL
From: emartin@apollo.hp.com
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 94 15:22:54 EST
To: sig-dce@osf.org
The naming workgroup of the DCE SIG met on Monday, October 31, 1994.
The agenda included:
A presentation by Norbert Lesser, OSF, about IETF Universal
Resource Identifiers, Uniform Resource Locators, and Uniform
Resource Names.
A presentation by Roger Zee, DEC, about CDS enhancements
planned for DCE 1.2.
A presentation by Liza Martin, HP, about X/Open Federated
Naming (XFN) plans for DCE 1.2.
Discussion of DCE namespace policy. DCE 1.2 is expected to
include a document that sets forth guidelines and policies for
structuring and using the DCE namespace.
Discussion of DCE naming vis. PC naming and OMG naming
Discussion about using an arbitrary database product for the
cell directory and security registry repositories.
Slides (in .ps format) from the CDS and XFN presentations may
be retrieved by
ftp hpcsos.col.hp.com (15.255.240.16)
name: anonymous
cd /dist/sig-dce/naming
Some slides that motivated the policy discussion are also in this
directory. I plan to remove these 3 .ps files around January 1.
Notes from the discussions (via Larry Jacobs, Transarc) follow.
1) Naming policy
DCE has not really addressed naming policy yet. People
want more naming policy in DCE so the DCE 1.2 team will
try to provide this. The team wants to know what policies
would be or have been helpful. We'd like to hear what
people have done within their own organizations to structure
their local namespaces. Perhaps we can get some ideas from
experiences with file systems.
The existing DCE namespace structure will remain. DCE 1.2
will extend this structure. As drafts of the DCE 1.2 policy
document are written, they will be circulated to the DCE SIG
naming workgroup for review.
Some likely extensions to the DCE namespace structure will
be to adopt XFN's namespace structure, which applies to the
enterprise namespace only. XFN notes that there are objects
which are commonly named in an enterprise; these are organizational
units, sites, users, computers, services, and file systems.
XFN reserves tokens to identify parts of the namespace
where these objects are named.
Merrill Holt, Oracle, pointed out that there are 2 levels
of applications: applications that are developed and used
in-house and ISV applications that are expected to run
in many different installations. The latter type of application
particularly needs guidance about how to use the namespace
and how to select the names it puts in the namespace to
avoid name collisions with other vendors' applications.
2) DCE Naming, PC Naming, and OMG Naming
Concern was raised about PC naming policy. Banyan has reviewed
the XFN spec. Joe Pato, HP, pointed out that XFN can be used
throughout an enterprise regardless of the repository for the
namespace. We are trying to establish a policy to cover
concepts through an abstract namespace.
It was noted that a program which uses the XFN API to manipulate
names can administer an entire federated namespace (ie. a namespace
that encompasses different naming systems).
OMG is defining its own naming service, but it can be layered
over XFN.
3) Arbitrary Database for DCE naming and registry repositories
The DCE 1.2 team considered modifying DCE CDS and the security
registry so that they could be layered over arbitrary databases.
Some work will be done toward this end but it won't be completed
in DCE 1.2.
For the next few years this modification would only be needed
by a few large customers with millions of hosts. If this becomes
an issue for a sizeable market share, then it could become a
core requirement for DCE. Right now the work is limited to
what can be done with existing funding.
When DCE provides client naming code that imports the XFN protocol,
it will be easier to use arbitrary databases for the naming
repository. Such a client is expected in a post DCE 1.2 release.
4) Action Items
Please send your DCE naming requirements to the sig-dce-naming@osf.org
list.
OSF RFC 4.0 by Scott Snyder discusses naming requirements raised a few
years ago. I will send email saying which requirements have been
addressed or are scheduled to be addressed. Perhaps this RFC will
stimulate more ideas.
Comments, corrections are welcome. Thanks to those who came to
the working group session.
Liza Martin
Hewlett-Packard
emartin@apollo.hp.com
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