DCE Program Group Minutes
Amsterdam Meeting, January 1998
By Eliot M. Solomon,
DCE Program Group Chair

Amsterdam provided the backdrop for an excellent set of meetings. Participation in the DCE Program meetings was excellent, with significant contributions by many vendors. The relation between DCE and The Open Group's IT DialTone program is being clarified, and the Open Group's commitment to DCE has been reaffirmed. The DCE Forum is functioning well. The DCE program continues to advance the technology, moving ahead with DCE 2.0 and Jade II. Together with previous work such as the LDAP NSI, DCE Web, and Jade I, these efforts will ensure DCE an important place on the Internet. And, to ensure that the DCE Program continues to deliver the solutions needed by business, we introduced the basis of a new strategy for DCE, placing an increased emphasis on delivering value to the enterprise.


· Skip to Thursday's recap
· Return to the DCE Program home page		 Wednesday: DCE Strategy. DCE and the DialTone Program

Wednesday morning was spent discussing where DCE needs to go, and how that relates to the Open Group's IT DialTone initiative. We started off with three presentations suggesting how we could position DCE, then had a discussion session to review and consider what had been presented.


Andrew's Presentation
· PowerPoint
· html		 Introduction to the IT DialTone Architecture
Andrew Walker of the Open Group gave a brief presentation on the IT DialTone Architecture as it has been developed by the Architecture Board. Among the key items presented were the architecture reference model, the relation between the IT DialTone core infrastructure and "application environments," and the three styles of interaction between "heritage" environments and the "rest of the world" in the IT DialTone framework.

Andrew drew his presentation material from a presentation prepared by Mike Lambert of The Open Group to be given at all Program Group meetings. Eliot Solomon used other parts of the same presentation material to describe the relation between the DCE program and the rest of the Open Group. Eliot explained that all pre-existing program groups are, for the time being, considered "strategic." This entitles each of them to a representative on the Architecture Board. Every program group must prepare an explanation of its continuing strategic role in the context of the IT DialTone architecture. These strategic position statements will be presented to the Architecture Board in July. Program groups that are not deemed "strategic" will no longer be represented on the Architecture Board. They will also bear an increased responsibility to defend and procure their funding, but they will not be disbanded. At this time, though, it appears likely that the DCE Program will be deemed strategic to the IT DialTone efforts.


Eliot's Presentation
· PowerPoint
· html		 The New Strategy for DCE
Eliot Solomon gave a presentation proposing a new "strategy" for DCE. The objective of the new strategy is to emphasize "Delivered Value" for the enterprise. Delivered value is the net benefit that the use of DCE can deliver to an organization. Eliot proposed a two-pronged approach to improving value. The first element is increasing the completeness of the business solutions one gets by using DCE. The second element is reducing the total cost of ownership, particularly the recurring costs of operation and ongoing software development.

To achieve this, Eliot proposed that DCE focus on addressing the operational and reliability needs of robust enterprise computing. Reaching out to the world community at large would be the job of other IT DialTone technologies, with DCE positioning itself to be the enterprise technology best suited to connecting to the internet. This would be in the "tradition" of DCE Web. Reaching across the internet with DCE technology for users needing "enterprise-style" applications will remain a key objective, to be addressed by Jade II, the subject of Dave Lounsbury's talk.

Finally, the strategy will aim at getting solutions software to use DCE. It will be a major goal of the strategy to convince independent software vendors to make their products "DCE aware." There are several ways to approach this. One is to focus on a relatively small number of target industries and their key vendors, to get DCE family solutions that exactly meet industry needs. The work currently underway with the Securities Industry Middleware Council in the DCE Forum is an example of this sort of relationship.


Dave's Presentation
· PowerPoint
· html		 DCE and the DialTone Technologies: Lightweight Clients
Dave Lounsbury presented material describing some of the technical aspects of the evolving relation between DCE and the IT DialTone technologies. He recapped the history and rationale of DCE, and discussed plans for technical work planned for the next year. Two key parts of that work are DCE 2.0 and Jade II. DCE2.0 features integration of public key technologies into DCE using CDSA. Jade II will provide a "pure Java" downloadable DCE that will extend DCE's reach over the Internet. Dave also discussed which of the technologies being developed for DCE release 2.0 should be presented to the Architecture Board for incorporation into the IT DialTone Standards Information Base.
Discussion
In an extended discussion period, all those attending the meeting discussed the material presented to this point. We broke into small groups to review three posed questions, then came back together to share our conclusions. The three questions were:
  • Does the strategy make sense
  • How can your company benefit from this strategy
  • What can your organization do to support this strategy or
    What do you need to be able to "pitch" this strategy to your organization

The overwhelming majority felt the strategy made sense. Some concern was expressed about the IT DialTone initiative. Some participants felt it was not sufficiently different from the original intent of DCE to be any better accepted. Questions were asked about whether DCE really will be supported, and about "what happened to the ActiveX program." The benefits that the participants anticipated from the strategy related particularly to security, and to secure communications over the Internet. The planned inclusion of Java tools and capabilities in DCE was also seen as a positive step.

Concerns expressed included questions about support and maintenance, and accountability for problem resolution. Several participants felt that they needed more specific information about schedules for the program; some expressed concerns about funding, and the program's long-term stability. A number of participants indicated that improved reliability, availability, and scalability (RAS) in DCE were required before they could make major additional commitments. Improved operation, administration and management (OA&M) capabilities were also identified as an urgent requirement.

Thanks to Alex Martin and Jodi Smith-Bennett of The Open Group for facilitating the discussion and tabulating the results.


Sally's Presentation
· PowerPoint
· html		 DCE Program Status
Sally Long, the DCE Program Manager, updated us on the accomplishments of the Program since the last meeting. Sally talked about the Program's new strategy and steps that have already been taken to make it successful. She highlighted technology accomplishments of the last quarter, including LDAP, JADE I, JADE II, and DCE 2.0. Plans for The Open Group's participation in Decorum '98 were also presented.

Sally then recapped the Program's progress since the Boston meeting in developing the DCE Forum. The work accomplished in the customer and vendor panels of the Forum was discussed. Sally reviewed the goals behind the Forum's efforts to identify and work with "vertical industry organizations." Much of the work of the last three months revolved around the "experimental relationship" with the Securities Industry Middleware Council (SIMC), a vertical organization representing "Wall Street" firms. Together we have made meaningful progress toward having both short- and long-term approaches to public key authentication in DCE. Just as important, working with SIMC has helped us understand how such relations can be made to work. Sally wrapped up with a brief feedback session, and then led us into the DCE Forum breakout sessions.

DCE Forum
Eliot Solomon and Sally Long led "face-to-face conference calls," in-person versions of the bi-weekly DCE Forum conference calls. Sally met with the vendors while Eliot led the customer panel's discussions.

During the vendor breakout, Sally discussed with the vendors the funding model for the development of a detailed PKI specification. Discussions are continuing.

During the customer panel discussion we agreed to set goals for what we wanted to accomplish by the San Diego meetings at the end of April. Three items were identified:

  • Make demonstrable progress on the work with SIMC.
  • Establish a problem reporting mechanism to share information about bugs, deficiencies, and other problems, and their resolutions
  • Prepare a "taxonomy" of cross cell trust and authentication models based on real world models of trust, both intra- and inter-enterprise. This will be the basis of a formal requirements specification for cross-cell security.

In addition, we agreed that the Forum would work better if information was shared more conveniently, in preparation for and to follow up on the conference calls. We will attempt to create a Forum web site within the DCE web site.


Dave's Presentation
· pdf		 Joint Meeting with the Security Program Group
Wednesday afternoon featured a joint meeting with the Security Program Group. Led by Dave Hemsath of IBM, the discussion covered near-term and strategic work for DCE security. We discussed at length the Securities Industry Middleware Council (SIMC) initiative to expedite the integration of Entrust public key technology with DCE authentication.

Return to Wednesday's recap		 Thursday: Adding Value with DCE
Thursday's meetings addressed the strategic goal of adding value to DCE. First our vendors described their plans for DCE, and their own approaches to adding value. We then discussed two areas in which value could be added: robust directory services, and documentation.

Gradient's Presentation
· PowerPoint
· html

Dascom's Presentation
· PowerPoint

Siemens-Nixdorf's Presentation
· PowerPoint
· html

IBM's Presentation
· available soon

Digital's Presentation
· PowerPoint
· html

Hewlett Packard's Presentation
· html

 Vendors add value with DCE

We were pleased to have an excellent level of participation from our vendors.

  • Jamil Bissar of IBM discussed IBM's plans for DCE. He then described hoe the popular Lotus Notes program can take advantage of, and add value to DCE.
  • Lance Travis of DASCOM presented their security, management, and administrative tools, including IntraVerse, Cell Manager, and COMET. He also discussed DASCOM's role as supplier of Java technology for DCE in the JADE program.
  • Brian Breton of Gradient described how the Web Crusader products allow DCE users to leverage their existing "heritage" systems. The integration of a wide variety of security technologies into DCE using
  • Bernd Mitterer of Siemens-Nixdorf (SNI) presented SNI's DCE product line, and their complement of third-party DCE products and partnerships.
  • Gunshekar Cemballi of Hewlett Packard gave a presentation about Hewlett Packard's approach to "Powering the Extended Enterprise." He talked about HP's efforts and plans to provide a complete enterprise computing solution that includes DCE.
  • Dorothy Mamos of Digital Equipment discussed Digital's plans for DCE. Digital's strategy is targeted toward improving UNIX and NT integration. A primary way to do this is by establishing relationships with strategic partners to provide a complete solution.

Opening Presentation
· PowerPoint
· html

Gradient's Presentation
· PowerPoint
· html

J. P. Morgan's Presentation
· PowerPoint
· html

 Robust Directory Services
Gerard Gebel, of Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., chaired this discussion. Jamil Bissar of IBM, Brian Breton of Gradient and Ian Armstrong of JPMorgan gave their perspectives on the meaning of Robust Directory. Gerry provided the following recap:
  • Jamil discussed some of IBM's recent work with directory services, including use of the Telstra X.500 technology, DB2 as the backing store on AIX version 4.3 and the addition of an LDAP interface for gda. Issues to be resolved for future implementations based on the LDAP interface include, but are not limited to performance, mappings for both NS and CDSPI and administrative requirements for managing multiple namespaces. Jamil also indicated that Ellen Stokes, IBM's chief directory architect, is a prominent contributing member of the IETF directory workgroup.
  • Brian Breton discussed Gradient's view of what an enterprise quality directory service implementation must contain: fault tolerance, scalability, recoverability, interoperability, and standards compliance. Operationally, it should be capable of bi-directional operation, support replication of updates only, hierarchical structures, segmented data bases and centralized account and security management. It should be available on multiple platforms, and provided by multiple vendors. Brian detailed some aspects of the directory service available in DCE today, and some steps to advance the technology appropriately.
  • Ian Armstrong presented a user's perspective on directory services. In reality we have multiple views of the same data, which can impose conflicting requirements on the directory services. Several issues must overcome before a directory service can be considered truly enterprise ready and capable. Ian's "to do" list includes meeting stringent performance requirements and providing suitable management API's for LDAP. Open questions needing resolution include: the appropriate handling of dynamic information; ownership and control of directory service data; and devising good models and mechanisms for caching.

A panel discussion with questions from the audience followed the presentations.

DCE Program Private Lunch
At lunchtime, the participants in the DCE Program Group meeting dined together in a private room off the Wintergarden of the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky. We were joined for lunch by Joseph DeFeo, CEO of The Open Group. Joseph said a few words to the members of the Program Group, reaffirming The Open Group's commitment to DCE, and the important role DCE is coming to play in the IT DialTone model.
Documentation and Information Sharing
Maryjane Grinham, of Digital Equipment Corporation, led a discussion of documentation and information sharing about DCE. Quite a few good suggestions were made, many relating to the notion that "how to" books focussing on specific classes of task would be useful to have.

Mary gave out questionnaires, asking what DCE documentation people use, how often they use it, and how useful it is. It asked about on line authoring and information sharing environments that DCE users commonly use and prefer, and solicited suggestions about key DCE areas that require documentation. If you would like to comment on DCE documentation, or discuss it further with Maryjane, you may send her E-mail at mary.grinham@digital.com.
European Success Stories
Rob Tate led a presentation of DCE usage examples from around Europe. Included were The Post Office (U.K.) and DeTeMobile (Deutsche Telecom). Presenters included Dave Slade, Reed Augliere, and Pierre Noel.