Overview of NetDB


NetDB is a set of libraries, programs and services which provide access to NetDB database, which stores machine and network parameters like names, ip addresses etc. This inforamtion is used to generate DNS tables and DHCP configuration, which happens at fixed intervals of time. To the left is a logical diagram of different parts of netdb.
Numbered boxes represent parts netdb consist of, not all of them are maintained under one source tree. Parts 8, 9 and 10 mained by Rob Riepel separately from the main body. Thus in a more narrow sense NetDB consists of parts 1 thru 6.

1. The heart of NetDB is its database back end runing Sybase 11/12. A lot of the code is written in transarc sql.

2. Right now it is a set of java libraries, java beans and jhtml (ugly mix of java and html) files runing inside of weblogic. We want to get rid of it and replace it with clean java libraries. netdb.jar is a core library of NetDB, all database access happens through it.

3. html_netdb.jar generates html pages

4. netdb_server.jar serves html pages to the client maintaining html session.

5. rmi_server.jar exposes netdb.jar library through rmi providing user authorization though kerberos.

6. rmi_client.jar is java GUI to the NetDB

7. whois server - provides command line interface as well as html to query database.