The Distributed Management Environment (DME) Network Management Option (NMO) provides access to network management protocols. One of the protocols it supports is the CMIP protocol. CMIP uses names to identify and locate managed objects and management applications. GDS is used to provide this name to address resolution.
DME has a requirement to support opaque address forms to cater to instances where CMIP is not running over pure OSI protocols. For this purpose, GDS contains some enhancements that are described in this topic.
To support DME an additional directory object class, and an additional directory attribute were required. Additional OM classes or OM attributes were not necessary. Therefore, GDS supports DME without having to negotiate a specific XDS/DME package. An application must include xdsdme.h (4xds) when using the new directory object class and attribute.
The concepts and notation used are first mentioned in XDS Class Definitions. They are also fully explained in Information Syntaxes, XOM Service Interface, and Object Management Package. The attribute types are introduced first, followed by the object classes.