Copyright (c) 1996,1997 Doug MacEachern, OSF Research Institute

You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public
License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file.


The DCE-Perl package provides an OO Perl interface to the DCE security APIs.  

The perl implementation is somewhat different from the C API:
o It takes advantage of perl's namespace packages, dropping prefixes 
  such as sec_rgy_, sec_login_, etc.  

o Stuctures such as the login_context or registry_context are held in
  blessed objects which know what namespace to look for methods in, 
  DCE::Login, DCE::Registry, etc.  

o Output arguments that are not needed by the underlying
  C functions are not passed into perl method calls, rather, they are 
  returned by the method as a list.
  However, anything that is needed for input that will change outside of 
  the method call such as a sec_rgy_cursor_t will be passed into the 
  method call as a reference.

The interface is not complete, but here is the breakdown so far:

o DCE::Registry 
  The sec_rgy_* functions
  This class is-a DCE::rgybase where constants from rgy*base.h live 

o DCE::Login 
  The sec_login_* functions
  This class is-a DCE::login_base where constants from sec_login_*.h live 

o DCE::ACL
  The sec_acl_* functions
  
o DCE::Status  
  This module attempts to help make sense of status codes

o DCE::UUID
  Misc uuid functions

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KNOWN BUGS

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TODO

o Better documentation and examples

o Complete sec_rgy_*, sec_login_* and *_acl_* interfaces.
  If there is a function missing you'd like to see implemented or would
  like to implement and contribute to DCE-Perl, drop a line.

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SUPPORT

For comments, questions, bug-reports, announcements, etc. subscribe to
the DCE-Perl mailing list <dce-perl@lists.csupomona.edu> by sending mail to:
<majordomo@lists.csupomona.edu> with a body consisting of "subscribe dce-perl".

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ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

Some of this work is based on DCE.xs written by: 
David J. Bianco <d.j.bianco@larc.nasa.gov>

Extra thanks to Paul Henson <henson@acm.org> for proving the mailing
list and lots of patience, bug spotting, fixing and ideas while
DCE-Perl was getting on its feet.

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Enjoy,
-Doug MacEachern <dougm@osf.org>


