ajayshah@castor.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) (09/19/89)
I enclose a interesting 'announcement' i got from a friend who works
for Sun, he claimed this wasn't secret in any sense.
I think it might be very significant. Connect to this some other
facts: The final picture of the PC Lan world is dominated by Novell
and NetWare, something which wasn't quite what Microsoft had in mind
with DOS 3. Further, Novell has announced that they aren't going to
work along the lines of Microsoft and IBM on the PS/2+OS/2 networking
world. So it seems like we're going to have some conflicts of
standards here. If the full-blown systems dreamt of below work out,
it would be fabulous for us: transparent networking of Suns, PCs and
Macs.
The following announcement was made this afternoon, 9/12/89:
SUN, NETWISE AND NOVELL ESTABLISH A COMMON PLATFORM FOR DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING
Technology Endorsed by Ashton-Tate, AST Research, Automated Design, Banyan, CMC, DAZIX, Informix, Interactive Systems, Lotus Development, Oracle,
Microrim, Relational Technologies, Sybase, 3Com and Unify
DALLAS --September 12, 1989-- Sun Microsystems, Netwise and Novell
today unveiled a solution that simplifies the creation of distributed
applications that will run, without modification, across a wide range
of operating systems, hardware architectures and network transports.
Software developers will be able to build and distribute to their
customers a single, shrink-wrapped software package that will run on
many PC LANs, interacting with software on other computers running
other operating systems and connected into different types of
networks.
Novell is the dominant supplier of PC networks, with more than four
million PC nodes. Sun is a leading UNIX(R) workstation vendor whose
Open Network Computing/Network File System (ONC/NFS(TM)) technology has
been licensed by more than 260 systems vendors and other
organizations. Netwise produces advanced network computing products
distributed by Novell as well as marketed separately. The three
companies have combined their networking technologies to establish a
new, high-level platform that greatly expands the installed base of
ONC/NFS-compliant systems while offering developers a simple migration
path to emerging international standards.
By pooling their technologies, the three vendors have greatly
simplified development of distributed applications (software that makes
use of multiple computers on the network). Developers now have
powerful tools that will improve their productivity as well as ensuring
that the resulting distributed applications will operate across
heterogeneous networks, from PC LANs to enterprise networks.
Today's announcement has won the support of several leading software
developers and system vendors, including Ashton-Tate, AST Research,
Automated Design, Banyan, CMC, Dazix, Informix, Interactive Systems,
Lotus Development, Oracle, Microrim, Relational Technologies, Sybase,
3Com and Unify.
"A major roadblock to the development of distributed applications has
been lack of standards for mixed-vendor networks," said David Mahoney,
CEO and president of Banyan Systems Inc., supplier of the VINES network
operating system. "We believe this announcement is a breakthrough that
will accelerate the industry into the era of client-server network
computing."
Netwise Supports Enhanced Sun RPC
Under the agreement, Netwise will engineer the next release of its RPC
TOOL to include support of an enhanced version of Sun's Remote
Procedure Call (RPC) Library and associated External Data
Representation (XDR) protocols. This enhanced RPC is based upon the
Transport-Layer Interface that was co-developed with AT&T for inclusion
in its soon-to-be-released UNIX System V Release 4 operating system.
Support of this enhanced RPC interface provides independence from the
underlying network transport (TCP/IP, IPX, OSI, etc.). This means that
distributed applications using this interface will be insulated from
the need to know what type of transport is actually running in a host
system.
Novell, which currently markets the Netwise technology as NetWare
RPC, will base future versions of its NetWare RPC product family on the
new transport-independent RPC technology. As a result, programmers
will need just one application programming interface to ensure that
their distributed applications will interoperate with heterogeneous
hardware platforms (PCs, workstations, mainframes) and operating
systems in which transport-independent RPCs are implemented, as well as
with all the existing ONC/NFS implementations in which the Sun RPC/XDR
interface is already available.
New Platform Simplifies Software Development
"Today's announcement means software developers have tools to develop
heterogeneous distributed applications without becoming networking
experts," said Larry Garlick, Sun vice president of distributed
systems. "Developers get compatibility with today's installed base of
Sun's RPC applications and protection from future protocol migration
issues."
"NetWare RPC greatly boosts developers' productivity by insulating them
from underlying communication interfaces like named pipes, NetBIOS and
sockets," said Nancy Woodward, vice president of Novell's Development
Products Division. "Because the RPC Library will be resident in
NetWare 386, all NetWare developers will have access to
industry-standard RPC functionality. Novell's goal is to encourage and
grow the market for network computing and we believe that these
technologies and tools will accelerate the expansion of this market."
"We welcome the opportunity to develop a common platform with Sun and
Novell," said David Andrus, Netwise chief executive officer. "We
believe our compiler holds the key for developers desiring a simple way
to develop distributed applications while achieving independence from
lower-level networking protocols and securing a path to international
standards."
Sun has placed the transport-independent RPC specifications in the
public domain and will freely license source code. Netwise will
license the RPC compiler technology to interested parties.
Migration to ISO Standards
The Netwise RPC TOOL offers developers a straightforward migration path
to the emerging International Standards Organization (ISO) Open Systems
Interconnection (OSI) protocols. The new RPC TOOL will support both
the enhanced Sun RPC as well as OSI specification, levels 5 to 7.
Developers can make a compile-time choice of which to use. As a
result, applications developed with the RPC TOOL will run with the
large installed base of RPC/XDR systems as well as migrate unchanged to
the OSI standards.
The various implementations of the new version of RPC TOOL are
scheduled to begin shipping next year. The new RPC TOOL interface will
be upwardly compatible with the current products, offering Netwise and
Novell customers a smooth upgrade path from their existing versions of
the Netwise RPC TOOL and NetWare RPC.
Existing applications written to RPC/XDR will interoperate with
applications written to the enhanced RPC so customers do not need to
upgrade their systems to the new code to continue to operate.
Customers will be encouraged to move to the higher-level Netwise RPC
TOOL for new development to improve productivity and to insulate
developers from migration issues at the lower levels of the protocol
stack.
Netwise, based in Boulder, Colo., is the leading independent software
supplier of products that simplify network computing.
Novell, Inc., of Provo, Utah, is the leading independent provider of
high-performance connectivity products. The company's NetWare operating
system has become a standard for LANs with more than 400,000 operating
systems installed worldwide.
Sun Microsystems, Inc., headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., is a
leading worldwide supplier of network-based distributed computing
systems, including professional workstations, servers and UNIX
operating system and productivity software.
###
ONC and NFS are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. NetWare is a
registered trademark and NetWare RPC and NetWare 386 are trademarks of
Novell, Inc. RPC TOOL is a trademark of Netwise, Inc. UNIX is a
registered trademark of AT&T. All other products or services mentioned
in this document are identified by the trademarks or service marks of
their respective companies or organizations.
Press Contact:
Dennis Freeman (415) 336-6117
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Ajay Shah, (213)747-9991, ajayshah@usc.edu
Gandalf for President!
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