Hello Jimmy!
Finally! Someone who is going to speak from a position of knowledge, rather than hype ... ;-)
(Although I hadn't planned on you responding ... I was really hoping that one of the people using it as an example, would do their homework and come back with some real answers ... ;-)
Now of course my overall object was to try and push someone to truly document the "level playing field" aspects ... what I've been told in many posts is that it's unique to Microsoft to "not release APIs" ...
> Okay Scott I'm a Universal MSDN subscriber. Could you look in your
> 30+ CD's and please tell me where writing an Installable File
> System driver (IFS) or filter driver is documented for Windows NT.
Perfect example! Here is a core service/feature that you, and others, might want to develop for NT ...
> Lets see Windows NT is 8 years old and they still haven't
> documented it. Did you know you have to pay another $2000 to get
> the IFS kit for NT? Did you know they still don't document it but
> instead give some lame trivial examples that are not accurate for
> Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000?
No ... I didn't know this was an extra cost developer kit ... but yes, I have experienced a wide range of developer kits, and I can believe that the sample source is pretty lame for this. It seems like an area that they don't get too many requests ...
> Could you point out where the Security Access Manager (SAM) API's
> are documented?
Probably another good example, but this starts to move more to my point. My real point was the types of APIs, and does Novell (and all OS vendors for that fact) publish the equivilent APIs? For example, does Novell publish the APIs that allow the redirection of NDS authentication, etc.? (This isn't saying that Novell is doing something wrong ... but trying to explore the "level playing field")
In your previous example of the Installable File System, does Novell publish the APIs for the Volume Switch Table so that I can write a "virtual volume" for NetWare? My point was two-fold ... get someone out there to use real examples from a knowledgeable position, and then to compare to other development environments.
I believe that the argument that only Microsoft doesn't document APIs is incorrect ... it's just *which* APIs ... I think that all companies have problems keeping up with the volume of information. And I think that all companies make strategic decisions on which APIs are priorities ... ;-)
> Windows 98 has hundreds of VxD's calls that are not documented that
> Microsoft uses in their products.
>
> When Windows 95 shipped the TCP TDI interface was not documented.
> Good thing we were only IPX back then.
Good point! So you are able to give me specific examples of places where Microsoft did not, or does not, have complete documentation. So now that takes us to the second question ... does Novell? Does Sun? Does Netscape? And please don't take this the wrong way ... again ... I would suggest that each vendor has incomplete information ... it's a major resource issue, and there is a certain amount of "protection" that is offered by this ... by all vendors.
> Please stop referring to the MSDN as the holy grail. I must be
> missing something because I have been spending way too much time in
> a debugger trying to figure things out.
Again, my statements were honest, and from my experience (yeah ... I know that I'm just a application/user mode kind of guy ... ;-) and I was looking for exactly this type of information.
> User mode API's might be documented but from my experience in
> practically all the projects I have worked on from kernel mode is
> that practically nothing is documented.
... and I have to say that you are one person that I will trust to accurately document your specific experiences ... not hearsay. You responded (although a little pissed off) exactly like I had hoped that someone would ...
... now I just have to locate the detailed ZENworks NDS Schema information and the detailed BorderManager NDS Schema information ... I know that they must be here somewhere ... ;-)
> Jimmy
Scott C. Lemon |
