PThreads Programming

Appendix A. Pthreads and DCE

In this appendix:

• The Structure of a DCE Server

• What Does the DCE Programmer Have to Do?

• Example: The ATM as a DCE Server

The Distributed Computing Environment (DCE), developed by the Open Software Foundation (OSF), consists of a toolkit and library that simplify the creation of secure, portable, and distributed applications for heterogeneous environments. Although DCE contains a great number of programming tools and server programs (and even supplies its own file system), we’ll focus on its programming library and run-time environment in this appendix.

DCE-based applications consist of client programs and server programs that use remote procedure calls (RPCs) to communicate with each other. Their client-server structure makes DCE applications natural candidates for threading. In fact, thread support is tightly integrated into the DCE libraries and services. We’ll use this appendix to give you an idea of the role threads can play in a DCE-based application.

DCE currently provides and uses the Draft 4 Pthreads interface. Check out Appendix B for a summary of the differences between the final Pthreads standard (which this book describes) and Draft 4.

The Structure of a DCE Server

A DCE server performs the same type of work as other servers. It waits for client requests on a communication channel and processes requests as they arrive. In fact, a DCE server looks just like any of the boss-worker style servers that we’ve presented elsewhere in this book, but it can ...