From: jer@stiatl.salestech.com (John Ramspott)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aix,comp.os.os2.apps
Subject: Re: Dear IBM: ...
Date: 10 Sep 92 14:45:22 GMT
Organization: Sales Technologies, Inc.

ctkosti@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Chris Kostick) writes:

>In article <1992Sep9.124659.5233@njitgw.njit.edu> dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap) writes:
>>In article <1992Sep8.144720.29841@afterlife.ncsc.mil> ctkosti@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Chris Kostick) writes:
>>
>>>	- DCE was originally to be available 4Q 92, but alas, it isn't.
>>
>>4Q 92 isn't over yet, ya know.

>Let me set my orginal sentence straight before I get anymore mail. What I
>meant was; DCE was orginally promised for 4Q 92 but as far as I can tell
>(and no one has told me different) it won't be available.

>I have heard from some sales critters to look forward to 3Q 93. But that
>would include everything, meaning a working implementation of DFS.

>Now that we have the "4Q 92 isn't over yet, ya know" to maybe 3Q 93, does
>anyone have some definitive answers?

>--
>chris

Well, we are expecting an announcement for DCE toolkits and general release
on September 22. Supposedly, they will tell us about the developer's kit,
DCE release, Encina, and CICS. The plan is to have a developer's kit in
September/October, with full DCE in December. So far, no official
commitment. I would be curious about where you heard 3Q93. That may be
about right for DFS perhaps, or maybe another platform like the mainframe
or AS/400. IBM has said they will put DCE on all their operating systems,
but that will be over the next couple of years.

If you want to develop with a DCE toolkit, one is available for AIX 3.2 
from TransArc corporation for about $15K. The current toolkit is based
on DCE 1.0. In October, TransArc hopes to have a DCE 1.0.1 toolkit. I
have been using the TransArc toolkit for several months. It has a few
bugs and performance problems, but good enough to develop with. They
never claim it to be commercial quality. I have found their support
staff to be very good. They are in Pittsburgh, PA. That $15k includes
a few days of training up in their offices. Considering how new all this
stuff is, they are quite impressive folks.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that the DCE 1.0 release from
OSF in January was a hurried one. It was released without thorough
testing and with known bugs. They had a deadline to reach. They have
worked very hard since then to fix bugs, and from what I gather from
legit sources, several thousand bugs were fixed and performance
improved dramatically in DCE 1.0.1. The code was frozen for DCE 1.0.1
just a few weeks ago, so don't shoot IBM or TransArc.

Yes, the RS/6000 was a reference platform, but that was AIX 3.1.5. A
little work is needed to port it to AIX 3.2. Then you need to add
time for optimizations by the vendor, testing, and hopefully improved
documentation.

Just keep in mind that no official announcements have been made. DCE
is an evolving technology. When is the last time any of us software
engineers gave perfect predictions? Right at this moment, the only
thing you can count on is a DCE 1.0 toolkit from TransArc. This
has been enough to keep me quite busy :-).

No definitive answers available at this time.

John E. Ramspott
Software Engineer
jer@saletech.com

-- I do not speak for my employer at all, or any above mentioned
   companies.  --

-- 
John E. Ramspott
Amiga Fanatic at Large
..!uupsi!stiatl!jer   (uupsi is a direct internet connection)