DCE Components:

As mentioned above, DCE is blend of various technologies developed independently and nicely integrated by OSF. Each of technologies forms a components of DCE, the main components of DCE are as follows:

• Thread Package :

It provides a simple programming model for building concurrent applications. It includes operations to create and control multiple threads of execution in a single process and to synchronize access to global data within the application.

• Remote Procedure Calls(RPC) Facility:

It provides programmers with a number of powerful tools necessary to build client-server applications. In fact, the DCE RPC facility is the basis for all communication in DCE because the programming model underlying all of DCE is the client-server model. It is easy to use, is network and protocol-independent, provides secure communication between a client and a server, and hides difference in data requirement by automatically converting data to the appropriate forms needed by clients and servers.

• Distributed Time Service(DTS) :

It closely synchronizes the clocks of all computers in the system. It also permits the use of time values from external time sources, such as those of the U.S National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), to synchronize the clock of the computers in the system with external time. This facility can also be used to synchronize the clock of the computers of one distributed environment with the clocks of computers of another distributed environment.

• Name Services :

The name services of DCE include the Cell Directory Services (CDS), the Global Directory Service (GDS),and the Global Directory Agent(GDA). These services allow resources such as servers, files, devices, and so on, to be uniquely name and accessed in a location-transparent manner.

• Security Service:

It provides the tools needed for authentication and authorization to protect system resources against illegitimate access.

• Distributed File Services(DFS):

It provides a system wide file system that has such characteristics as location transparency, high performance, and high availability. A unique feature of DCE DFS is that it can also provide file services to clients of other file systems.