What is DCE?
DCE stands for Distributed Computing Environment and is an Open Software Foundation standard written for single image view of heterogenous environments. It is middleware that provides distributed computing layers. One such vendor providing DCE clients is Transarc. It replaces the /bin/login for Unix systems with a separate authentication module which verifies users against a centralized DCE registry and sets the UNIX uid/gid structures accordingly.
DCE is the Distributed Computing Environment, from the Open Software Foundation. (It is called “the DCE” by sticklers for grammatical consistency.) (The Open Software Foundation is now called the Open Group.) DCE consists of multiple components which have been integrated to work closely together. They are the Remote Procedure Call (RPC), the Cell and Global Directory Services (CDS and GDS), the Security Service, DCE Threads, Distributed Time Service (DTS),and Distributed File Service (DFS). The Threads, RPC, CDS, Security, and DTS components are commonly referred to as the “secure core” and are the required components of any DCE installation. DFS is an optional component. DCE also includes administration tools to manage these components. DCE is called “middleware” or “enabling technology.” It is not intended to exist alone, but instead should be bundled into a vendor’s operating system offering, or integrated in by a third-party vendor. DCE’s security and distributed filesystem, for ex
