dce/rpc "client" api

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, Sander Striker wrote:

> Jeremy> Such implementations (DCE) on UNIX are quite rare and
> Jeremy> not widely used compared with ONC/RPC.
> 
> Could you please give me a short insight between the
> diffs between ONC/RPC and DCE/RPC? Maybe a pointer
> to ONC/RPC?

ONC/RPC uses XDR - extended data representation.

DCE/RPC by *default* uses NDR - network data representation.

DCE/RPC allows the negotiation of different data syntaxes, the most
typical of which being NDR.  i do not know [i suspect not] if ONC/RPC can
do this.

both XDR and NDR are very valuable in their own right for packing data
structures into contiguous streams of data.  NDR as implemented by ms,
from what i gather, provides a much richer set of data structures than
XDR.

when you add that to function calls and authentication mechanisms and
remote data transfer, both are extremely powerful.

ONC/RPC uses GSSAPI for authentication and encryption negotiation.

DCE/RPC uses ... dunno what it uses, as the only impl. i know of is the
bind/bind-ack/3-way-auth of NTLMSSP!!! :)  however, other impl.'s - the
X-open-group dce1.22 for example - allow use kerberos etc.