Novell Inc has introduced its NetWare 4.0 Software Developer’s Kit for programmers that want to produce NetWare Loadable Modules or client software for the next release of its network operating system. The client software provides a single Applications Programming Interface set for MS-DOS, Windows and OS/2 to aid portability. The single kit replaces previously separate kits. It includes a pre-release version of NetWare 4.0, and currently supports Borland International Inc and Microsoft Corp C compilers with more promised in the future, as is support for APIs for assembly language programming calls. Loadable Module developers also get a pre-release version of the operating system, but the kit for the server end is only compatible with the Watcom v9.0 optimising compiler. The company said that existing Loadable Modules should work with NetWare 4.0 as long as they are well behaved – in other words do not write direct to the hardware – and use the previously documented programming interfaces; this includes all Novell-certified NetWare Loadable Modules. The new version of NetWare waves goodbye to the NetWare Bindery, which has been used up to now to store user attributes and the like. Instead it uses a much more standard directory services database. In order to keep the old Loadable Modules running, Version 4 will be able to run a Bindery Emulator. Meanwhile the company says it will continue to sell its NetWare 3.X development kit, in an effort to prove to customers that the current version of the operating system has a future.
