Name Service Switch

The Solaris 7 operating environment uses standard naming interfaces (for example, gethostbyname) to support multiple naming services (such as NIS, NIS+, and DNS, among others), thereby allowing applications to access data transparently from different services. One instance of this is the Name Service Switch capability in the Solaris 7 operating environment, which allows applications to use a UNIX standard naming interface (for example, getxxbyyy interfaces). See the nsswitch.conf(4) man page for more information.