What Is XFN?

XFN stands for X/Open Federated Naming. XFN is a standard that is actively supported by organizations such as SunSoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, DEC, Siemens, and OSF. The programming interfaces and policies that FNS supports are specified by XFN. An overview of XFN concepts is presented later in this chapter; Chapter 2, Interfaces for Writing XFN Applications describes the XFN programming interface in detail.

In a 64-bit XFN application, the X.500 directory service is not supported.

FNS is compliant with the X/Open CAE Specification for Federated Naming (July 1995). Applications that use FNS are portable across platforms because the interface exported by FNS is XFN, a public, open interface endorsed by other vendors and X/Open. X/Open Co. Ltd. is part of the Open Group, which is an international standards organization committed to defining computing standards that are endorsed and adhered to by major computer vendors.