| CAE Specification |
|---|
| Systems Management: Data Storage Management (XDSM) API |
| X/Open Document Number: C429 |
| ISBN: 1-85912-190-X |
©February 1997, 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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The Open Group is an international open systems organization that is leading the way in creating the infrastructure needed for the development of network-centric computing and the information superhighway. Formed in 1996 by the merger of the X/Open Company and the Open Software Foundation, 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 assist user organizations, vendors and suppliers in the development and implementation of products supporting the adoption and proliferation of open systems.
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CAE (Common Applications Environment) Specifications are the stable specifications that form the basis for our product standards, which are used to develop X/Open branded systems. These specifications are intended to be used widely within the industry for product development and procurement purposes.
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CAE Specifications are published as soon as they are developed,
so enabling vendors to proceed with development of conformant products
without delay.
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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 CAE Specification. While the intent is to progress Preliminary Specifications to corresponding CAE Specifications, the ability to do so depends on consensus among Open Group members.
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 CAE Specifications, in which case the relevant Technology Specification is superseded by a CAE Specification.
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To adequately support data management applications, a file system and its host Operating System must include a set of functions and semantics not found in most POSIX-compliant systems. These extensions include the capability to monitor events on files, and special interfaces to manage and maintain the data in a file.
Data management applications such as file backup and recovery, file migration, and file replication, typically function as logical extensions of the Operating System. They often must have special permissions (such as "root" or file system credentials) to operate. The interfaces and data structures described in this document are all designed for these specific applications. These interfaces are not intended for direct use by typical end-users or unprivileged processes.
It is assumed the reader has a good understanding of standard UNIX semantics, is familiar with the C language, and understands the issues and tradeoffs in writing data management software.
Motif®, OSF/1®, and UNIX® are registered trademarks and the "X Device"TM; and The Open GroupTM; are trademarks of The Open Group.
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