🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <id.2K0W.G37@ferranti.com>, peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:

>You seem to have a strong opinion about this, so could you explain to me
>precisely how the UNIX API is lacking, and what specific features of NT
>would be impossible under a UNIX API.

Which UNIX API? (Here we go again. :-)
Asynchronous I/O.
Waiting for multiple synchronisation objects.
ACLs on objects.
Quotas.

>Why did Microsoft have to create
>a completely new API from scratch, and implement it in such a way that
>programs using it are entirely insulated from their UNIX API environment
>(POSIX shell)?

Which new API? POSIX 1003.1, which is a standard and therefore hardly new?
1003.1 is an API standard, not a shell standard.

>
>Well for UNIX, where access to virtually all system resources is provided
>through the filestore, I would agree. But NT has half a dozen different
>mechanisms for interacting with the system... how can multiuser security
>be managed if it only protects a minor part of the system?

All interactions with the NT kernel go through the object manager, and hence
through the security subsystem.

>Since OS/2 and NT have virtually the same level of backwards-compatibility
>with DOS, how do you make out that the OS/2 approach is any way diferent?

NT uses the protected subsystem approach made popular by Mach. OS/2 provides
a DOS API, but the NT kernel knows nothing about DOS, since DOS (and OS/2, and
POSIX, and...) APIs are provided by the subsystems.

>I'm sorry, but you seem to be discussing a completely different set of
>software packages than I'm familiar with or have been discussed in the
>media.
>-- 
>Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
>Ferranti International Controls Corporation                'U` 
>Sugar Land, TX  77487-5012 USA
>+1 713 274 5180                            "Zure otsoa besarkatu al duzu gaur?"

We seem to have moved into software architecture. :-)

PJDM
--
Peter Mayne                     | My statements, not Digital's.
Digital Equipment Corporation   |
Canberra, ACT, Australia        | "AXP!": Bill the Cat