dce/rpc "client" api

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, Cole, Timothy D. wrote:

> > >         There are a lot more things you can do with DCE/RPC and NT than
> > just
> > > serving files/printers and providing domain authentication, and Samba
> > isn't
> > > going to be offering any of them.
> > 
> > Yet.

ur, noooo, according to the "leaders of the samba development", there will
be _no_ convenient way to interoperate with samba's dce/rpc-based
services.

> >  And anyway, there are perfectly good DCE/RPC implementations
> > available for UNIX already, over TCP transport.

[weeellll... those are not fully MS-compatible.  they do not support,
afaik, wchar_t as strings (for unicode) or encapsulated unions or
bit-fields].

> > 
> 	Hrm.  Okay.  I didn't think about that.
> 
> 	Can everything that uses DCE/RPC over SMB be made to use DCE/RPC
> over TCP instead?

if the transport is available [in the dce/rpc server], then it can be
"dynamically registered" by a service to accept incoming connections on
thi transport.

only nt is capable of doing this -- at the moment.

> > Very few apps use DCE - ask yourself why ?
> > 
> 	I would expect a _lot_ of NT apps that require that sort of thing
> use MSRPC...

including all DCOM-based ones.

> 	[ note that my current understanding is that MSRPC is essentially a
> specific application of DCE/RPC, or at least that it requires it ... I've
> been using them interchangably in this context.  If that's wrong, it
> explains my weird response... ]

MSRPC is a superset of DCE/RPC.  DCE/RPC was developed and has pretty much
stagnated for at least... ten years.  MSRPC is a main-stream, critical
component of NT, and is doing a pretty good job [*if* used properly,
hint-hint to the inexperienced people who developed spoolss.idl, you
messed up \PIPE\spoolss pretty badly, it's _majorly_ inefficient :)]

> 	Unless I'm gravely misunderstanding you, what you describe seems
> kind of a backwards way of achieve code reuse.  Copying-and-pasting code, I
> mean, and then loading part of the app in-process in Samba to do the
> remainder...
> 
> > Call me when you've got a *real* product with such a complaint,
> > not a hypothetical one.
> > 
> > :-).
> > 
> 	That's fair.  Original complaint withdrawn.

hm, by you, it is, because you're not the one preparing the groundwork to
write such a Real Product: no offense intended or implied, tim.

jeremy's attitude is just downright unhelpful.  it implies that without a
finished product, the cooperation and code reuse should not even be
CONSIDERED.  well, i am sorry to say this, but fuck you too.