| DCOM Explained by Rosemary Rock-Evans Digital Press ISBN: 1555582168 Pub Date: 09/01/98

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### In Summary

I think we can see from this chapter that Microsoft’s partners are beginning to put the D in DCOM in a fairly major way. It is still early days, but in the course of time you will see DCOM appearing on the AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, SINIX, Linux, SCO UnixWare, Digital Unix, Macintosh, Open MVS, OS/400, and OpenVMS platforms in addition to the Windows 95, Windows NT WS, and Windows NT Svr platforms on which it runs now.

Support for services is also going to be fairly good, though not all the services will be supported. All the communication type services are likely to be supported with the exception of context bridging, which has no meaning in this context as all the ports use TCP/IP.

The threads and security services will be supported, but some doubts hang over the security services and whether they will be end to end. As we also pointed out, threads support may also not be completely uniform even though it is provided with a common API. Where threads are supported by ports of the kernel as they are in the DCOM FTE ports, threads services should be common.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the lack of support for MSMQ and MTS, both of which are fairly key services, but we may see changes here in the fullness of time.

No translation services are supported, but support is provided for structured storage.

The Registry—an essential part of DCOM even though it is a part of Windows NT—is being ported, but at the moment little is known of what will happen when Microsoft starts to introduce the Active Directory. Administration services are a real weak spot, with some services being provided by the port suppliers, but with nowhere near the functionality of the Microsoft administration tools, which are GUI-based and provide a large number of GUI based functions. Worse, the administrator has no way of monitoring the entire configuration of Windows and non-Windows machines, so if the administrator has a problem, it is going to be incredibly difficult sorting out where it is. I have visions of a poor developer running between machines, accessing each administration utility trying to figure out why performance has dropped to a 50-second response time! I guess you’ll have to build links to your system management software. You are using systems management software, aren’t you? Of course you are!

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