Preface

The Federated Naming Service (FNS) is new to the Solaris^TM product family. FNS is a set of application programming interfaces and policies that allow applications to use a common set of names and policies over different name services.

FNS is not a replacement for NIS+, the network name service included in the Solaris software environment. Rather, FNS is implemented on top of NIS+ and allows you to use a set of common names with desktop applications. SunSoft.'s implementation of FNS conforms to the X/Open^TM federated naming (XFN) specification.

Who Should Use This Book

The primary audience of Federated Naming Service Guide is software developers who write distributed applications. Use of this guide assumes basic competence in programming, a working familiarity with the C programming language, and a working familiarity with the UNIX® operating system. Developers should read all four parts of this manual.

System and network administrators should look at Solaris Naming Setup and Configuration Guide for FNS setup and configuration information. Information on FNS administratiuon is in Solaris Naming Administration Guide. This manual does not cover NIS+ or the Domain Name System (DNS) except as they relate to FNS.

How This Book Is Organized

Chapter 1, Introduction to the Federated Naming Service (FNS) is a high-level overview of FNS and the problems it addresses.

Chapter 2, Interfaces for Writing XFN Applications describes the client programming interfaces for X/Open Federated Naming (XFN).

Chapter 3, XFN Programming Examples presents three self-contained executable programs: a namespace browser, a printer client and server, and a tool to populate attributes of users.

Appendixes

Appendix A, XFN Composite Names describes the XFN composite name string syntax and the resolution techniques for composite names.

Appendix B, XFN Composite Names Syntax gives supplemental information about composite name syntax.

Related Books

With the exception of the XFN specification, the following books do not specifically cover FNS but they provide a good background on how name services work in client-server computing:

• Raman Khanna. Distributed Computing--Implementation and Strategy. Prentice Hall, 1993

• Sape J. Mullender (editor) . Distributed Systems. ACM Press, 1990

• P. Albitz and C. Liu. DNS and BIND. O`Reilly, 1992

• Managing the X.500 Client Toolkit. SunSoft Inc., 1995

• X/Open Preliminary Specifications, Federated Naming: The XFN Specifications. X/Open Document #P403, ISBN: 1-85912-045-8. X/Open, July 1994

You may also want to reference the following AnswerBook® on-line documentation:

• Solaris 2.5 Reference Manual AnswerBook

• Solaris 2.6 Software Developer AnswerBook Vol 1

• Solaris 2.6 Software Developer AnswerBook Vol 2

• Solaris 2.6 System Administrator AnswerBook Vol 1

• Solaris 2.6 System Administrator AnswerBook Vol 2

Ordering Sun Documents

The SunDocs^SM program provides more than 250 manuals from Sun Microsystems, Inc. If you live in the United States, Canada, Europe, or Japan, you can purchase documentation sets or individual manuals using this program.

• For a list of documents and how to order them, see the catalog section of SunExpress^TM Internet site at http://www.sun.com/sunexpress.

What Typographic Changes and Symbols Mean

The following table describes the typographic changes used in this book.

machine_name% su

Password:

Shell Prompts in Command Examples

The following table shows the default system prompt and superuser prompt for the C shell, Bourne shell, and Korn shell.