🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan8.090448.29665@klaava.Helsinki.FI>, vhalkka@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Vesa Halkka) writes:
> Quite many vendors are selling CDDI stuff,
> and there is a standard, but
> 
> - what are the magic words that promise plug compatibility (ANSI.. )
> 
> or is there some kind of interoperability matrix:
> 
> if I buy Crescendo Sbus CDDI adapters and Interphase VME adapters,
> and plug them to a Crescendo/Interphase/brandXYZ CDDI box..
> what will happen ?


The magic word "ANSI" is not a guarantee.  Even two systems that have
each passed the same "conformance tests" can fail to interoperate.  If
you cast the idea of a "network conformance test" into comparing two
abstact machines operating on arbitrarily long input streams, you can
see that in the general case a perfect conformance test is formally
impossible.

If you want more than potentially empty promises of compatibility, put
appropriate words concerning the features you want and "liquidated
damages" in your contracts and purchase orders.  Get written or at
least verbal promises from the vendors.  Make the vendors do the work,
including fixing things that don't work.

For now, given that few others besides Crescendo are building CDDI
concentrators, it seems likely that CDDI interoperability is not a
problem.


Vernon Schryver,  vjs@sgi.com