Banking on security - First Union National Bank ensures secure Web-based transactions with DCE middleware - includes related articles on security software in use at the University of Buffalo, DCE's evolution into a security component for Web-based extranets and intranets - Company Operations

Software Magazine, Nov, 1997 by Barbara Francett

DCE Goes Undercover

To some industry observers, the mere mention of using DCE as the foundation for any application invites disbelief and even derision. They question why anyone would use DCE when Corba is at hand.

How did these two architectures come to be viewed as opposing choices? "DCE was originally hyped by the Open Software Foundation [now known as The Open Group] as a cross-platform set of services and application programming model," says Scott Kandel, partner, distributed computing infrastructure group at Deloitte & Touche LLP. The idea was that vendors and customers would write applications from the ground up in the DCE environment, and these applications could be ported to any platform. "But this vision of 'DCE nirvana' never came to pass," Kandel says.

Why didn't DCE take off in the marketplace? "Because it was a spec written by technologists," says Jim Hurley, director of operating environments at The Aberdeen Group in Boston. "Adopters were organizations with technically proficient staff that could build applications out of it. DCE had too heavy a thumbprint. It was a technology in search of an application," he says.

As a result, many vendors began to avoid developing products using DCE and set their sights on Corba instead. "It seems to me that DCE is now, to all intents and purposes, obsolete," says David Matthews, vice president of marketing at transaction processing monitor vendor UniKix Technologies. "We view it as essential that our TP monitor play in the Corba world, whereas we have no demand from our customers for DCE." Chief among DCE's shortcomings is the lack of any Java interfaces, Matthews says. UniKix has a Corba-based product in beta slated for October release that will support distributed applications and integrate Java development and legacy CICS applications.

Jeri Edwards, vice president of product strategy for TP monitor vendor BEA Systems, concurs. "Corba will replace DCE," she says. "DCE tried to provide standard software, not a standard API. It's better to define an API implemented by a number of vendors, and that's what Corba has done."

However, Kandel believes comparing the two technologies head-to-head just doesn't make sense. "It's apples and oranges," he says. "Corba is a programming model, but DCE as a programming model never took off. Corba is more leading edge, but it doesn't have a common set of infrastructure services provided as part of the model. Vendors can use the good parts of Corba for programming and leverage DCE security. At a certain level, they are complementary technologies."

So it seems that DCE isn't dead yet -- in many cases, it's just gone undercover. "There's a lot of power in remnant DCE services such as cross-platform security services seen in products from vendors like Gradient Technologies, IntelliSoft, and Dascom," says Kandel. "DCE should be used as the underpinning, especially at the security level." Microsoft uses a "100% implementation of the DCE RPC" in DCOM. Orbix, a Corba-based object request broker from Iona Technologies, uses DCE security services, and even Corba itself uses the DCE spec for distributed time services, he says.