[Info-vax] Reinventing VMS logical names (Fuchsia & Win NT)

[Ian Miller]

On Thursday, November 9, 2023 at 3:06:31 PM UTC, Robert A. Brooks wrote:
> On 11/9/2023 8:47 AM, Dan Cross wrote: 
> > Jake Hamby (Solid State Jake) <jake.... at gmail.com> wrote: 
> 
> > 
> >> If I were hired to work on the future of OpenVMS, the one 
> >> non-obvious direction I'd explore (anticipating what customers 
> >> aren't yet asking for) would be to extend logical name tables 
> >> and VMS's existing concept of multiple object classes with 
> >> common security attributes to provide a secure way for 
> >> processes to grant capabilities to each other via special 
> >> mailbox messages or special LNM entries in a shared table. 
> > 
> > That actually sounds kind of interesting.
> If you look at the original plans for DECnet/OSI in the late 80's/early 90's, 
> the expectation was that the distributed naming service would be used for much more than 
> node name lookup. 
> 
> I was a customer at the time, so at that point, I was hearing rumours, but a big concern was 
> how many naming servers would one need for clusters of varying sizes. 
> 
> VSI has all the old internal DEC Notes conferences; reading some of the internal 
> communication around that time, it's apparent that concern was HUGE deal with the sales force, 
> as that was a constant question coming from customers. 
> 
> As we all know, the project became quite delayed, and among the aspects of the project that got 
> tossed was the DNS as a broker of all objects. 
> 
> Yeah, that would not have addressed the security aspects noted by Jake, but it would have been 
> an interesting start. 
> 
> -- 
> -- Rob

DECdns was a grand idea