The NIS+ application programmer's interface (API) is a group of functions that can be called by an application to access and modify NIS+ objects. The NIS+ API has 54 functions that fall into nine categories:
Object manipulation functions (nis_names())
Table access functions (nis_tables())
Local name functions (nis_local_names())
Group manipulation functions (nis_groups())
Application subroutine functions (nis_subr())
Miscellaneous functions (nis_misc())
Database access functions (nis_db())
Error message display functions (nis_error())
Transaction log functions (nis_admin())