Security and management services are essential to all layers of the environment. The DCE Secure Core services give software developers the tools to create end-user applications and system software products for distributed computing. The DCE RPC is the fundamental communications mechanism, allowing direct calls to procedures on remote systems as if they were local procedure calls. This simplifies development of distributed applications by eliminating the need to explicitly program the network communications between the client and server. The DCE RPC mechanism masks differences in data representations on different hardware platforms, allowing distributed programs to work transparently across heterogeneous systems.
Applications identify resources by name, without needing to know where the resources are located.
The DCE Security Service provides the mechanisms for writing applications that support secure communications between clients and servers. The DCE Audit Service provides the mechanism for detecting and recording critical events in distributed applications. The Audit Service performs the logging of audit records based on specified criteria. An administrative command interface selects the events that are going to be recorded based on certain criteria. An event classification mechanism allows the logical grouping of a set of events for ease of administration.