Date: Tue Aug 15 15:14:00 EDT 1995
X-Version: 2.9
6.8) Unix glossary.
 This section provides short definitions of various concepts and
 components of (or related to) Unix systems.
 Chorus: message-passing microkernel, may form basis for a future release
 of SV. Chorus already have SVR4 running on top (binary-compatible).
 CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture).
 COSE (Common Open Software Environment) [Sun, HP, IBM]: common look and
 feel (Motif -- Sun will let OpenLook fade away), common API.
 Reaction against Windows NT. See section 6.4 above.
 DCE (Distributed Computing Environment, from OSF): Includes RPC (Apollo's
 NCS), directory service (local based on DNS, global on X.500), time,
 security, and threads services, DFS (distrib. file system), ....
 OS-independent.
 DME (Distributed Management Environment, from OSF): future.
 DO (Distributed Objects [Enterprise]): ???.
 FFS (Fast File System): from Berkeley, 1983. Equivalent (exact?) of
 UFS in SunOS. Has notions such as cylinder groups, fragments.
 FSF (Free Software Foundation)
 Mach: modern kernels from CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) on which many
 Unices and other OSs are based (e.g. OSF/1, MacMach, ...):
 - 2.5: monolithic kernel with 4.2BSD
 - 3.0: microkernel with BSD Unix server in user space (and other OSs,
 e.g. MS-DOS)
 Newsgroup: comp.os.mach
 MFS (Memory File System):
 NeWS (Network extensible Window System), from Sun?: PostScript-based,
 networked, toolkits (and even clients) loaded in server. Part of
 OpenWindows.
 NFS (Network File System): contributed by Sun to BSD, stateless server
 ONC (Open Network Computing): from Sun(?), includes RPC, name service
 (NIS aka YP), NFS, ... (found in many Unices, other OSs).
 OpenStep [NeXT, Sun]: ???
 PowerOpen: both a standard, and an organization promoting PowerPC.
 Involves IBM, Apple and Motorola; others? See section 6.4 above.
 PowerPC (PPC): a RISC CPU chip [IBM, Motorola].
 RFS (Remote File System): SV, stateful server, incompatible with NFS
 RPC (Remote Procedure Call): high-level IPC (inter-process communication)
 mechanism. Two flavors.
 - ONC: Over TCP or UDP (later OSI), uses XDR to encode data.
 - DCE: has a different RPC mechanism (based on Apollo's NCS)
 S5 FS: System V's native file system, blocks 512 to 2K.
 sockets: BSD interface mechanism to networks (compare TLI).
 STREAMS: a message-passing kernel mechanism, initially in SVR3, which
 provides a very good interface for protocol development.
 TFS (Translucent File System): Sun, COW applied to files.
 TLI (Transport Library Interface): SV's interface to transport services
 (TCP, OSI). UI has also defined an APLI (ACSE/Presentation Library
 Interface)
 UFS (?): BSD's native file system as seen in SunOS, blocks 4K to 8K,
 cylinder groups, fragments.
 XTI (X/Open Transport Interface): TLI with enhancements
 X11: pixel-oriented window system from MIT.
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End of unix/faq Digest part 6 of 7
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-- 
Ted Timar - tmatimar@isgtec.com
ISG Technologies Inc., 6509 Airport Road, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L4V 1S7