Various discovery mechanisms are usually available on an OES 2 network.
DNS/DHCP
Directory services
Local host configuration files
Service Location Protocol (SLP services)
WinSock (NetWare only)
Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) server
Some systems are designed to leverage only a single discovery technology. Others choose among the various providers. And some use different technologies in combination with each other.
NetWare 3 and 4 used the IPX-based Service Advertising Protocol (SAP) as the discovery mechanism. All the servers advertised their services automatically. If a server went offline, the SAP information on the network was dynamically refreshed.
Starting with NetWare 5 and pure TCP/IP, the Service Location Protocol was adopted as the default, though optional, discovery mechanism. SLP was chosen because it was the TCP/IP-based protocol most like SAP in its automatic nature and dynamic refresh capabilities.
For more information, see Section 12.5, SLP.
WinSock collects service information from all available service-discovery sources.
NetWare Loadable Module™ (NLM) programs that leverage WinSock have access to all discovery services on the network automatically. Therefore, if you removed SLP as a source of information (for example) and placed the information into DNS or a local host file, any NLM that leverages WinSock would not know the difference.
NOTE:There is no WinSock equivalent in the Linux environment. BSDSock provides for transport only, not name resolution. Therefore, any NetWare services that leveraged WinSock and are provided on OES 2 Linux use other service-discovery mechanisms.
UDDI is an open source, platform-independent registry that lets you provide a discovery service on the World Wide Web to easily locate, integrate, and manage businesses and services.
For NetWare 6.5, Novell developed a directory-enabled UDDI server for use with the exteNd™ J2EE™ Application Server. Starting with OES 1 NetWare, the UDDI server component was removed from the list of products that can be installed.
However, the Novell UDDI server has been released as open source software and is available for download on the Novell Forge Web site.
The current OpenWBEM implementation of the Common Information Model Object Manager (CIMOM) lists SLP as an optional discovery provider. If SLP is to be used with CIMOM, it must be in compliance with the SLP API specification (RFC 2614). The default discovery vehicle for CIMOM is the statically configured URI. For more information, see the CIMOM specification at the Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF) Web site.