computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...

, the Federated Naming Service (FNS) or XFN (X/Open Federated Naming) is a system for uniting various name services under a single interface for the basic naming operations. It is produced by

X/Open X/Open group (also known as the Open Group for Unix Systems and incorporated in 1987 as X/Open Company, Ltd.) was a consortium founded by several European UNIX systems manufacturers in 1984 to identify and promote open standards in the field of in ...

and included in various Unix operating systems, primarily Solaris versions 2.5 to 9. The purpose of XFN and FNS is to allow applications to use widely heterogeneous naming services (such as NIS,

DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...

and so on) via a single interface, to avoid duplication of programming effort. Unlike the similar

LDAP The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP ) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Directory serv ...

, neither XFN nor FNS were ever popular nor widely used. FNS was last included in Solaris 9 and was not included with Solaris 10.

External links and references

Overview of FNS
(Solaris 9

man page A man page (short for manual page) is a form of software documentation usually found on a Unix or Unix-like operating system. Topics covered include computer programs (including library and system calls), formal standards and conventions, and ev ...

)
Overview of the XFN interface
(Solaris 9 man page)
X/Open Federated Naming - specification for uniform naming interfaces between multiple naming systems
(Elizabeth A. Martin, ''Hewlett-Packard Journal'', December 1995) *
Federated Naming Service Programming Guide
' (Sun Microsystems 816–1470–10, September 2002) Sun Microsystems software Identity management Solaris software