On March 9, 1995 the DCE Users Group of Michigan met at the University of Michigan's Center for Information Technology Integration (CITI). The meeting was sponsored by the "Client/Server Exchange", a joint partnership of IBM and the University of Michigan, promoting open, client/server computing.
Hosting the meeting was Bill Hampton of U-M/CITI. Duncan McRae of Ford Motor Company kept the minutes. Again, thanks to the "Client/Server Exchange" for keeping the coffee pots filled and allowing Bill Hampton the time to organize and coordinate this meeting.
Bill Hampton, of CITI, opened the meeting.
He announced that he had created a Web homepage for the group. Point your browsers to http://dcewww.citi.umich.edu:8080/dugm/
He asked, "How do we expand awareness of the group?" People suggested that we post something in the DCE news posting (DCETalk or DCE SIG). Someone suggested that we tell the vendors so that they may tell some of their other customers.
The issue of Anonymity -- Should we remain anonymous? Consensus seems to be that some of the members want to be solicited by vendors so that they may get information about DCE-related products. It was decided that a single person will be made the contact for each of the companies. Bill will put a list of these people and the companies in the home page. E-mail your contact to Bill Hampton through the group mailing list: (dugm-request@citi.umich.edu)
There were to be three presentations given at this meeting by the University of Michigan, Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Northern Telecomm. EDS canceled on the day of the meeting. They had to correct some DCE problems they were encountering. Bob Babcock of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources offered to give his in place of EDS.
Janani Janakiraman, of the Client/Server Exchange, CITI, University of Michigan, gave the first.
Janani Janakiraman, Client/Server Exchange, CITI, University of Michigan
Projects
o beta site for DCE 1.0.1 code in Jan 92
o Ported DCE to
- AIX/ESA (code services)
- MVS (MVS)
- MAC (work in progress)
o Set up production cell in Jan 94
o Client/Server Exchange Program (Jan 94)
o Education Programs
o DCE related tech reports
o DCE utilities developed
o Developed DCE based demo programs
o Used DCE application tools
o Involvement with OSF
o Big Ten Project (sharing transcripts)
DCE Production Cell
o Used by CITI staff
o 30 users, 35 machines
o Servers: RS/6000 (IBM DCE 1.2 code)
o Clients: RS/6000, Sun, HP, PC (dos, os/2)
o Regular backups done
o Intercell communication through DNS
o DFS used extensively
- User home directories
- Used for large builds
- 5 Gig disk space
- 2 file server machines
o Looking at security and CDS replication
o Migrating to DCE 1.3 (IBM) code
Client/Server Exchange
o Partnership between CITI and IBM
o Services Provided
- customized training and briefings on client/server
computing
- multivendor interoperability lab for prototyping
solutions
- help customers in building pilot applications
o For more info contact: info@citi.umich.edu
Education Programs
(contract: info@citi.umich.edu)
o CITI Projects Showcase
o Business case for Client/Server computing
o Planning a Client/Server implementation
o Getting stated with DCE
o DCE Features and Functionality (based on OSF)
o DCE Applications Programming (based on OSF)
o DCE System Administration (based on OSF)
o DCE Internals (based on OSF)
DCE-Related Tech Reports
o 95-1 Adamson, A., Rees, J., and Honeyman, P., "Joining
Security Realms: A Single Login for Netware and
Kerberos", February 1995.
o 95-2 Khandker, M.A., Honeyman, P., and Teorey, T.J.,
"Performance of DCE RPC", January 1995.
o 95-4 Blumson, S., Carter, M., and Hyde, D., "Automatic
Insertion of Performance Instrumentation for Distributed
Applications", February 1995.
o 94-1 Carter, M., "Adding 50,200 Users to a DCE Registry:
A comparison of OSF DCE V1.0.2 and IBM DCE/6000 V1.2",
February 1994
o 94-2 Lever, C., "Using DCS without DCE/LFS", January
1994.
o 93-4 Howe, J., "an Environment for 'Sniffing' DCE-RPC
Traffic", June 1993.
o CITI Tech reports are available electronically vis AFS
and by anonymous FTP to "citi.umich.edu", directory:
/afs/umich.edu/group/itd/citi/public/techreports.
o URL for CITI home page: /http://www.citi.umich.edu
DCE Utilities Developed
o DCEized tools: xlock, console/telnet login, ftpd.
o DCESuitcase - a collection of tools (shell scripts) for
installing, configuring, administering and living with
DCE and DFS. *** Bill Hampton will announce where these
unsupported tools may be accessed via ftp. Stay Tuned! ***.
o DFS Test Tools - extensions to Expect (TCP based tool) to
talk directly to a DFS fileserver to perform operations
as getting a fid for a file, opening the file and reading
its contents.
DCE-Based Demo Programs
o Demographics Demonstration Program (DDP)
o Data Access with DCE (DAD) - access to RDB
o Accessing Student Records (Mandarin) - part of Big Ten
pilot with OSU, U of M and Iowa participating.
DCE Application Tools
o Worked with several DCE application tools
- Visual DCE (Gradient)
- Connection/DCE (Open Horizon)
- Encompass (Open Environment Corporation)
- DATE (Bull)
- EOS (Ellery Systems Inc.)
- Encina (Transarc)
- OODCE (Hewlett-Packard)
Involvement with OSF
o Ted Hanss - Directory, CITI
- Chairman of the OSF end user steering committee
o Sarr Blumson - Senior SRP, CITI
- co-author of DCE RFC 33
o Technical participation in DCE SIG, Security SIG.
Strategic Direction
o The University intends to use DCE as a key piece of its
strategy to achieve interoperability across a
heterogenous environment. The first DCE service up will
be security. We hope to have RPC-based applications
running next year. We also intend to start rolling out
DFS next year.
It was mentioned that DECORUM shows that the 4GL list is growing - Oracle, Sybase, DB2 and Ingress are becoming DCE compliant.
Bob Duncan of Northern Telecom said that IBM had a teleconference in which they said that MVS will be X/Open compliant.
Robert (Bob) Duncan gave the next presentation for Northern Telecomm.
Northern Telecomm spans the globe -- with offices located on
every continent. They have had DCE up for one year, with three
cells. The systems they use are H-P clients and IBM RS/6000
servers. They had hoped that they could begin going production
world-wide this year but because they could not present a DCE
application, they have had their budget cut to where they can
only afford four servers this year. Bob said that DCE works, but
before they can roll it out, they need:
- Version 1.1.0 of DCE
- HP/UX 10.x - which has client DCE bundled. H-P said it will be
available in the third quarter of this year.
- There is no DFS in HP/UX 10.x. Episode (LFS) in next release.
He said that they looked at Dazel for global printing on the 4 - 8 initial servers. They expect from 400 to 500clients initially using systems different systems.
He also said that Northern Telecomm needs a OODBMS toolset. They are looking at H-P's OODCE.
Someone asked what type of application development environment they used. Bob said that they are not using one at this time. He said that Digital Equipment Corp makes one named DEC Cohesion.
Some of the future DCE projects for Northern Telecomm are:
- Secure time service - NTP is not secure enough
- DCE Dialtone - allow users to "plug" into ATM
backbone and become a cell member and run
applications in a cell.
- Create a DCE-based product that will allow a switch
to logged into and reconfigured (phone numbers,
trunk changes, etc).
The will tie geographically dispersed cell members together with fractional T1 lines.
Once fully deployed, they expect between 40,000 and 50,000
clients.
Bob Babcock of the Michigan Department of Natural Resource gave
the final presentation.
The department has 220 professions.
Bob is in an information-gathering stage with DCE. He is also
looking for input in some other related areas such as:
- They are using Windows for Workgroups for 330
people with NT servers. They will go to Windows95
when it is available. He asked if they are "getting
painted into a corner".
- Does anyone have policies for internet access. How
does an organization prevent employees from
"surfing the net"?.
DNR is the second largest department in state government in the use of PCs. The Michigan Department of Transportation is number one.
They have two principle efforts:
- Resource management
- Environmental permits
He wants to implement a "Uniform Computing
Environment" (UCE). This consists of:
- Windows for workgroups
- Internet access - in two years, all members of the
department will have it.
- Access to U.S. EPA IBM ES 9000 database for waste
management permits.
- Access at office
- Access at home
- Access in the field (laptops)
He mentioned that the governor wants to remove the DNR's mainframe this year which is also driving the move to a client/server environment.
The DNR's Livonia office, the biggest, is going paperless.
He needs an application development environment.
Wants to do electronic data interchange. They get 250,000 requests for permits each month and he wants to do it all electronically.
Some time was spent discussing the implications of and meaning of DCE in an environment of distributed computing including where DCE makes sense versus where other solutions might be more appropriate.
The next meeting will be on Tuesday, April 18. We will discuss what transpired at the DCE Application Developers Conference and DCE SIG meeting. The presenters will be Chrysler, EDS and Ford.
The following DUGM meeting, in May, will tentatively have:
- a presentation from Atrium, the producer of the Dazel
distributed print system.
- Tom Handwick, with a DCE Security SIG review
- DCE 1.2 PST - Performance SIG (RFC 33) and
Instrumentation SIG (RFC 16).
- OE/MVS - DCE
DCE Users Group of Michigan (DUGM)
Author: Janani Janakiraman
Revised: 06/18/96
URL: http://www.citi.umich.edu/dugm