hile some observers believe the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) is fading, others say it's the only middleware environment that's dependable enough for critical applications.
"DCE is still the most production-oriented scheme out there," says Bob Anderson, managing analyst for application component services at Datapro Information Services Group in Delran, N.J.
Phyllis Byrne, the Austin, Texas-based VP of distributed systems services for IBM, says DCE, as it was originally conceived a decade ago, was very complex. But IBM and other vendors are providing starter kits and other support that make the tec
hnology easier to work with.
Some IS chiefs say DCE is their best bet for pulling together disparate elements of their computer systems, especially those networks where object-oriented programming isn't an option.
Bill Won, VP of enterprise and software security technologies at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, began exploring the technology in 1993 by testing an IBM beta version of DCE for the OS/2 platform. He says Chase has several projects in development, including using DCE to download mainframe files to a database server. DCE isn't always easy to work with, Won admits, but it's the only viable option he has found to securely connect diverse platforms. "If someone is looking for a silver bullet, it doesn't exist," Won says.
Network managers such as Roger Lawson, associate director of computing and IT at the University of Vermont in Burlington, are finding the best approach to DCE is to use only what you need. Lawson tapped DCE to create a single system image for his servers, which allowed hi
m to modify IBM RS/6000s to meet the exploding computing demands of the 15,000-account university system.
With the DCE single-system image in place, the network treats the group of servers as one, which lets Lawson work on one or more servers without bringing the system down.
Lawson started the project in late 1995, and since the university was one of the earliest adopters of the DCE feature from IBM, it ran into several reliability problems, such as coding glitches and memory leaks. But with daily support from IBM and long hours by his staff over the course of three months, Lawson finally got the technology working. Now, he says, it performs dependably.
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hile some observers believe the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) is fading, others say it's the only middleware environment that's dependable enough for critical applications.
