What Is the DCE Director?

The DCE Director is a graphical tool for managing DCE cells. The DCE Director makes it easy to perform management tasks, such as creating, deleting, and modifying user accounts, security groups, and CDS directories. In addition, the DCE Director allows you to access the standard DCE control programs (rgy_edit, cdscp, acl_edit, and dtscp), while providing new functions, such as allowing authorized users to preconfigure host machines in a cell and manage user accounts.

The DCE Director includes an enhanced ACL editor, the Visual DCE ACL Editor, which allows you to graphically manage ACLs. You can invoke the Visual ACL Editor directly from the DCE Director or you can use it as a standalone tool by clicking its icon in the DCE program group.

The DCE Director presents an object-oriented view of the DCE environment. The top-level object is the cell. Objects in the cell that a user can manage include users, groups, hosts, CDS directories, and servers.

Specifically, a cell administrator can perform the following actions:

· Create, delete, modify, and browse user accounts and security groups.

· Create, delete, modify, and browse CDS directories, and specify where to store replicas (copies) of a directory.

· View and change access control lists (ACLs) of CDS objects and application objects.

· Display a list of machines that are members of the selected cell.

· Determine whether security, CDS, and time servers are running.

· Add computers to the cell without leaving your desk and without having to give the administrator's password to anyone.

You can also manage several cells from your desktop because the DCE Director lets you manage foreign cells (that is, cells other than the cell to which your local machine belongs).