DCE Support

Many organization are replacing applications based on DCE, but they continue to run them because moving and/or migrating DCE applications into contemporary technologies, platforms and languages takes more time than they planned. In meantime, DCE continues to provide the valuable infrastructure for these companies. eCube provides the infrastructure and expertise to support and maintain DCE while the modernization effort proceeds: we provide utilities to monitor and maintain these applications while replacement technology is being developed.

NXTmonitor application infrastructure manager replaces DCE services

NXTmonitor, the replacement product for Borland’s AppCenter, is now available for DCE application services management. NXTmonitor, a component of NXTera RPC middleware, is a three-tier application that manages distributed applications written in DCE, CORBA, Entera and other middleware flavors with fail-over and load-leveling capabilities.  NXTmonitor understands dependencies within services and starts them up based on your own configuration. Start up order, start up delays and configurable groups can customize your DCE deployment for optimum start up. Being a distributed process itself, NXTmonitor has agents on each platform it supports (AIX, HP-UX, Linux, OpenVMS, Solaris, Windows) and can operate even with the Master server down. For more information, Click here.

DCE modernization path

DCE developers are finding that they can easily migrate their DCE applications to an RPC middleware known as NXTera. The broker is easily replaced with the NXTera broker, the dce_pthreads are replaced by POSIX pthreads, and the CDS is replaced by the NXTera Security layer based on LDAP. For more information, go to eCube website

Digital Transformation of DCE to NXTera

As the knowledge and support of DCE continues to decrease and the current technology gap increases, now is the time to transform your DCE applications into modern, SOA compliant services. eCube has a strategy to transform your applications into NXTera Hybrid applications capable of integration with .NET, Java and the Cloud. Existing DCE application components can be replaced with modern components, extending the ROI of these applications. See more (link to ARM)

Use of DCE Middleware

Developed in the 1980s by a consortium of computer vendors, DCE (Distributed Computing Environment) was a two-tier RPC middleware integrated integrated into most major UNIX vendor’s OSes. Many secure applications were developed with this middleware technology. DCE has four main components that were widely used: remote procedure call (DCE-RPC), Cell Directory service or CDS (a naming service), pthreads (a process threading library) and a Security infrastructure controlled by Access Control Lists or ACLs. A fifth component, Distributed File System (DFS) was not widely used. Historically DCE complexity has forced IT organizations to make hard choices between existing and valuable resources developed in DCE — and the benefits of starting over in newer technologies.

The use of DCE Middleware is still prevalent in spite of IBM’s announcements of dropping support. Many companies have developed products and services for their customers using the popularly known DCE middleware. Now days companies using DCE are turning to integrators to rewrite these applications, but total re-writes are very costly and time consuming.

The DCE supplies a framework and a toolkit for developing client/server applications. The framework includes:


  • a remote procedure call (RPC) mechanism known as DCE/RPC
  • a naming (directory) service
  • a time service
  • an authentication service
  • a distributed file system (DFS) known as DCE/DFS


DCE Modernization

Modernization of DCE includes digital transformation of some of the DCE services and libraries used by DCE applications. While some services are no longer needed due to changes in computing technology, others based on heritage technologies can be transformed into contemporary technologies, on new platforms and with different languages. By using the ARM method, DCE infrastructure can be captured, analyzed, reused and redeployed with integrated SOA technology that replaces existing DCE business rules as services in services oriented and model driven architectures.

DCE Modernization Benefits

DCE Modernization offers alternatives to development and package deployment projects and also provides ways to augment replacement initiatives through the reuse and migration of existing data and application architectures. DCE Modernization:

  • Streamlines the time and costs associated with eliminating or migrating obsolete DCE technologies and platforms.
  • Lowers the risks associated with deploying DCE replacement systems based on the reuse of proven functionality extracted from existing systems.
  • Reduces the costs and timeframes of migrating data into target data architectures, relational databases and package environments while improving the integrity of the end result.
  • Supports business unit consolidation, mergers and acquisition initiatives through data and application architecture consolidation and integration.
  • Enables the redeployment of proven, stable DCE functionality in SOA, model driven and other agile architectures