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By Ward Rosenberry, David Kenney, Gerry Fisher
First Edition  October 1992 
Pages: 258
ISBN 10: 1-56592-005-8 | ISBN 13: 9781565920057

This book is OUT OF PRINT.

A technical and conceptual overview of OSF's Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) for programmers, technical managers, and marketing and sales people. Unlike many O'Reilly & Associates books, Understanding DCE has no hands-on programming elements. Instead, the book focuses on how DCE can be used to accomplish typical programming tasks and provides explanations to help the reader understand all the parts of DCE.
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"This book is ideal for those who need information on the breadth and scope of DCE, what it can and cannot do, and what it is and is not. It would be a good choice for managers, programmers, system administrators and students." --Stephen Chan, UniForum Monthly, February 1993

"Although this entire book is a veritable paragon of good writing, it is the loving description of program construction (including annotated source code listings in an appendix provided in this chapter that truly brings technology to life. These few pages reflect a clarity and precision that can only be attained by authors who really know their subject. There is no doubt that this is the best distillation of progamming experience one is likely to find in this particular subject area." --Richard Brooks, IBM Internet Journal, November 1994

"Computers are tremendously inefficient. At least, we *use* computers in tremendously inefficient ways. In the interests of actually getting any work done, machines which were built to do transaction processing have to run user interface programs, computers built for user interface work have to store data, and boxes meant to store data have to handle email. Hence, the drive for 'client/server' or, in its more general form, distributed computing. DCE (Distributed Computing Environment), supported by members of the OSF (Open Software Foundation), is not precisely a product, but a set of tools and standards for the pursuit of this end. "Although this book is focussed on DCE, it would also make a good primer for distributed computing in general, and the conceptual framework for it. The organization shows a decided bent towards developers and programmers, but most of the material is quite accessible to the intelligent reader. (You may, however, wish to *start* with the question-and-answer session in Appendix B.) In fact, you may find the material to be disappointing if you are looking for 'how to' or instant answers. This is not the fault of the authors: DCE isn't *finished* yet. "While promises and platitudes about client/server abound, few really understand what it entails. This work, while not exactly bedtime reading, is a very useful volume for those who *should* understand distributed computing.

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