Client/server applications are of increasing importance in
industry; they are a significant first step towards a global
distributed processing model. A very recent response to this
trend is the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) of the
Open Software Foundation (OSF), the emerging new industry
standard for distributed processing. The papers in this
volume discuss the client/server approach based on DCE,
illustrating and analyzing the functionality of important
DCE components and applications. A number of contributions
also focus on new models beyond traditional client/server
processing and beyond DCE.
The papers in this volume were presented at the
International Workshop on the OSF Distributed Computing
Environment, held in Karlsruhe, Germany, October 7-8, 1993.
Following an introductory chapter, the contributions are
grouped into parts on DCE analysis and comparison,
application support, methods and tools, RPC extensions, and
object-based systems.

Distributed systems, OSF DCE, and beyond.- Comparing two distributed environments: DCE and ANSAware.- Comparison of DCE RPC, DFN-RPC, ONC and PVM.- Some DCE performance analysis results.- A performance study of the DCE 1.0.1 Cell Directory Service: Implications for application and tool programmers.- Fidl - a tool for using DCE from Fortran.- Converting legacy FORTRAN applications to distributed applications.- Using standard tools to build an Open, client/server prototype.- Pilgrim's OSF DCE-based services architecture.- Converting monolithic programs for DCE client-server computing given incomplete cutset information.- Managing the transition to OSF DCE security.- DCE Cells under megascope: Pilgrim insight into the resource status.- Supporting continuous media in open distributed systems architectures.- Integrating RPC and message passing for distributed programming.- Optimized selection of servers for reduced response time in RPC.- Extending DCE RPC by dynamic objects and dynamic typing.- A simple ORB implementation on top of DCE for distributed object oriented programming.- DCE++: Distributing C++-objects using OSF DCE.- Object-oriented distributed computing with C++ and OSF DCE.- Graphical design support for DCE applications.- Taming heterogeneity in networked environments.