| Open Group Technical Standard |
|---|
| Transport Provider Interface (TPI), Version 2 |
| Document Number: C810 |
| ISBN: 1-85912-246-9 |
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The Open Group is a vendor and technology-neutral consortium which ensures that multi-vendor information technology matches the demands and needs of customers. It develops and deploys frameworks, policies, best practices, standards, and conformance programs to pursue its vision: the concept of making all technology as open and accessible as using a telephone.
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A Product Standard is the name used by The Open Group for the documentation that records the precise conformance requirements (and other information) that a supplier's product must satisfy. Product Standards, published separately, refer to one or more Technical Standards.
The "X" Device is used by suppliers to demonstrate that their products conform to the relevant Product Standard. By use of the Open Brand they guarantee, through the Open Brand Trademark 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 supplier. The Open Group runs similar conformance schemes involving different trademarks and license agreements for other bodies.
Open Group Technical Standards, along with standards from the formal standards bodies and other consortia, form the basis for our Product Standards (see above). The Technical Standards are intended to be used widely within the industry for product development and procurement purposes.
Technical Standards are published as soon as they are developed, so enabling suppliers to proceed with development of conformant products without delay.
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.
CAE Specifications and Developers' Specifications published prior to January 1998 have the same status as Technical Standards (see above).
Preliminary Specifications have usually addressed an emerging area of technology and consequently are not yet supported by multiple sources of stable conformant implementations. There is a strong preference to develop or adopt more stable specifications as Technical Standards.
The Open Group has published specifications on behalf of industry consortia. For example, it published the NMF SPIRIT procurement specifications on behalf of the Network Management Forum (now TMF). It also published Technology Specifications relating to OSF/1, DCE, OSF/Motif, and CDE.
In addition, The Open Group publishes Product Documentation. This includes product documentation-programmer's guides, user manuals, and so on-relating to the DCE, Motif, and CDE. It also includes the Single UNIX Documentation, designed for use as common product documentation for the whole industry.
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:
Readers should note that Corrigenda may apply to any publication. Corrigenda information is published on The Open Group Web Site at http://www.opengroup.org/corrigenda.
Full catalog and ordering information on all Open Group publications is available on The Open Group Web Site at http://www.opengroup.org/pubs.
TPI was originally specified by UNIX International (UI). UI intellectual property rights were subsequently acquired by UNIX System Laboratories (USL), who in turn were later acquired by Novell Inc. See also the Acknowledgements page. The Open Group first published its TPI CAE Specification in July 1997 (Document Number C615).
This TPI specification is now revised and published as an Open Group Technical Standard. It supersedes the TPI CAE Specification C615.
Motif®, OSF/1®, UNIX®, and the "X Device" are registered trademarks and IT DialToneTM; and The Open GroupTM; are trademarks of The Open Group in the U.S. and other countries.
The Open Group acknowledges
Novell's contribution of their TPI 2.01 specification as the base
document from which the February 1997 TPI Specification (C615)
was developed.
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