Frontmatter

©July 1998, The Open Group All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

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Preface

The Open Group

The Open Group is the leading vendor-neutral, international consortium for buyers and suppliers of technology. Its mission is to cause the development of a viable global information infrastructure that is ubiquitous, trusted, reliable, and as easy-to-use as the telephone. The essential functionality embedded in this infrastructure is what we term the IT DialTone. The Open Group creates an environment where all elements involved in technology development can cooperate to deliver less costly and more flexible IT solutions.

Formed in 1996 by the merger of the X/Open Company Ltd. (founded in 1984) and the Open Software Foundation (founded in 1988), The Open Group is supported by most of the world's largest user organizations, information systems vendors, and software suppliers. By combining the strengths of open systems specifications and a proven branding scheme with collaborative technology development and advanced research, The Open Group is well positioned to meet its new mission, as well as to assist user organizations, vendors, and suppliers in the development and implementation of products supporting the adoption and proliferation of systems which conform to standard specifications.

With more than 200 member companies, The Open Group helps the IT industry to advance technologically while managing the change caused by innovation. It does this by:

• Consolidating, prioritizing, and communicating customer requirements to vendors

• Conducting research and development with industry, academia, and government agencies to deliver innovation and economy through projects associated with its Research Institute

• Managing cost-effective development efforts that accelerate consistent multi-vendor deployment of technology in response to customer requirements

• Adopting, integrating, and publishing industry standard specifications that provide an essential set of blueprints for building open information systems and integrating new technology as it becomes available

• Licensing and promoting the Open Brand, represented by the "X" Device, that designates vendor products which conform to Open Group Product Standards

• Promoting the benefits of the IT DialTone to customers, vendors, and the public

The Open Group operates in all phases of the open systems technology lifecycle including innovation, market adoption, product development, and proliferation. Presently, it focuses on seven strategic areas: open systems application platform development, architecture, distributed systems management, interoperability, distributed computing environment, security, and the information superhighway. The Open Group is also responsible for the management of the UNIX trademark on behalf of the industry.

Development of Product Standards

This process includes the identification of requirements for open systems and, now, the IT DialTone, development of Technical Standards (formerly CAE and Preliminary Specifications) through an industry consensus review and adoption procedure (in parallel with formal standards work), and the development of tests and conformance criteria.

This leads to the preparation of a Product Standard which is the name used for the documentation that records the conformance requirements (and other information) to which a vendor may register a product.

The "X" Device is used by vendors to demonstrate that their products conform to the relevant Product Standard. By use of the Open Brand they guarantee, through the Open Brand Trade Mark License Agreement (TMLA), to maintain their products in conformance with the Product Standard so that the product works, will continue to work, and that any problems will be fixed by the vendor.

Open Group Publications

The Open Group publishes a wide range of technical documentation, the main part of which is focused on development of Technical Standards and product documentation, but which also includes Guides, Snapshots, Technical Studies, Branding and Testing documentation, industry surveys, and business titles.

There are several types of specification:

• Technical Standards (formerly CAE Specifications)

  The Open Group Technical Standards form the basis for our Product Standards. These Standards are intended to be used widely within the industry for product development and procurement purposes.

  Anyone developing products that implement a Technical Standard can enjoy the benefits of a single, widely supported industry standard. Where appropriate, they can demonstrate product compliance through the Open Brand. Technical Standards are published as soon as they are developed, so enabling vendors to proceed with development of conformant products without delay.

• CAE Specifications

  CAE Specifications and Developers' Specifications published prior to January 1998 have the same status as Technical Standards (see above).
  

• Preliminary Specifications

  Preliminary Specifications have usually addressed an emerging area of technology and consequently are not yet supported by multiple sources of stable conformant implementations. They are published for the purpose of validation through implementation of products. A Preliminary Specification is as stable as can be achieved, through applying The Open Group's rigorous development and review procedures.

  Preliminary Specifications are analogous to the trial-use standards issued by formal standards organizations, and developers are encouraged to develop products on the basis of them. However, experience through implementation work may result in significant (possibly upwardly incompatible) changes before its progression to becoming a Technical Standard. While the intent is to progress Preliminary Specifications to corresponding Technical Standards, the ability to do so depends on consensus among Open Group members.
  

• Consortium and Technology Specifications

  The Open Group publishes specifications on behalf of industry consortia. For example, it publishes the NMF SPIRIT procurement specifications on behalf of the Network Management Forum. It also publishes Technology Specifications relating to OSF/1, DCE, OSF/Motif, and CDE.

  Technology Specifications (formerly AES Specifications) are often candidates for consensus review, and may be adopted as Technical Standards, in which case the relevant Technology Specification is superseded by a Technical Standard.

In addition, The Open Group publishes:

• Product Documentation

  This includes product documentation-programmer's guides, user manuals, and so on-relating to the Pre-structured Technology Projects (PSTs), such as DCE and CDE. It also includes the Single UNIX Documentation, designed for use as common product documentation for the whole industry.

• Guides

  These provide information that is useful in the evaluation, procurement, development, or management of open systems, particularly those that relate to the Technical Standards or Preliminary Specifications. The Open Group Guides are advisory, not normative, and should not be referenced for purposes of specifying or claiming conformance to a Product Standard.

• Technical Studies

  Technical Studies present results of analyses performed on subjects of interest in areas relevant to The Open Group's Technical Program. They are intended to communicate the findings to the outside world so as to stimulate discussion and activity in other bodies and the industry in general.

Versions and Issues of Specifications

As with all live documents, Technical Standards and Specifications require revision to align with new developments and associated international standards. To distinguish between revised specifications which are fully backwards compatible and those which are not:

• A new Version indicates there is no change to the definitive information contained in the previous publication of that title, but additions/extensions are included. As such, it replaces the previous publication.

• A new Issue indicates there is substantive change to the definitive information contained in the previous publication of that title, and there may also be additions/extensions. As such, both previous and new documents are maintained as current publications.

Corrigenda

Readers should note that Corrigenda may apply to any publication. Corrigenda information is published on the World-Wide Web at http://www.opengroup.org/corrigenda.

Ordering Information

Full catalogue and ordering information on all Open Group publications is available on the World-Wide Web at http://www.opengroup.org/pubs.

This Document

The API can be used by programmers who want to collect performance information by instrumenting the business logic of their applications or on other software in their domain. This approach may be used by customers who have access to the source code of the business logic on their systems in such a way that instrumentation is possible or by the use of non-invasive techniques that may supply some of the data without instrumention. Neither the collection or presentation mechanism of the ARM data returned from the API is covered in this standard.

Collection of ARM related data from the software components which surround the business logic is often very desirable, and may in many cases be possible by using ARM 2.0, but more work is needed in this area to encourage the software components to use the ARM API. This will take the form of the expansion of future versions of the ARM API, or definition of other mechanisms which can support these very diverse software environments.

It should further be noted that the applications (and other components) must normally be running within the reach of the enterprise management domain in order to allow for collection and presentation of performance data from agents, through some vendor specific mechanisms.

This Technical Standard is the formally adopted Open Group publication of the ARM API version 2.0 specification.

History

Typographical Conventions

• Bold font is used in text for options to commands, filenames, keywords, type names, data structures and their members.

• Italic strings are used for emphasis or to identify the first instance of a word requiring definition. Italics in text also denote:

  • Command operands, command option-arguments, or variable names; for example, substitutable argument prototypes

  • Environment variables, which are also shown in capitals

  • Utility names

  • External variables, such as errno

  • Functions; these are shown as follows: name(). Names without parentheses are C external variables, C function family names, utility names, command operands, or command option-arguments.

• Normal font is used for the names of constants and literals.

• The notation <file.h> indicates a header.

• Names surrounded by braces, for example, {ARG_MAX}, represent symbolic limits or configuration values which may be declared in appropriate headers by means of the C #define construct.

• The notation [ABCD] is used to identify a return value ABCD, including if this is an error value.

• Syntax, code examples and user input in interactive examples are shown in fixed width font. Brackets shown in this font, [], are part of the syntax and do not indicate optional items.

Trademarks

Motif®, OSF/1®, UNIX®, and the "X Device"® are registered trademarks and IT DialTone^TM; and The Open Group^TM; are trademarks of The Open Group in the U.S. and other countries.

Microsoft®, Microsoft Windows NT®, and Microsoft Windows 95® are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

RISC System/6000^TM; is a trademark, and AIX® and OS/2® are registered trademarks, of International Business Machines Corporation.

Sun® and Solaris® are registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Other third party logos and product/trade names are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies.

Acknowledgements

The Open Group acknowledges the work of the ARM Working Group, under the sponsorship of the Computer Measurement Group (CMG), in developing the ARM version 2.0 API specification, which provides the technical source material for this Open Group Technical Standard. The following CMG ARM Working Group member companies assisted in the development of the ARM version 2.0 API:

Referenced Documents

 

http://www.opengroup.org/publications/catalog/c807.htm

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