Conference decwet::windows-nt

Streams is a software environment used to make network protocols 
usually. It is indeed present on Windows NT since day 1 (comes from 
Microsoft, Digital has nothing to do with it).

HOWEVER, it is known to be very buggy and Microsoft has said they 
won't make any effort to fix it. They strongly recommend to move away 
from it. So I would suggest that you tell your customer that yes, 
Streams is there, but why do they want it ? What do they want to 
achieve and couldn't we do it another (less bumpy) way ?

	Vincent

    This was a "Must have" question, so then I can answer yes!
    But what can I recommend as similar, winsockets?
    
    /Per-Erik

    I'd recommend some reading of the MSDN (and/or Technet) CDs.
    

    Just in case we misinterpreted the original question, there's a memory
    bandwidth benchmark called STREAM, sometimes (improperly) called
    STREAMS, developed by John McCalpin.  See
    
    	http://www.cd.virginia.edu/stream/
    
    for details.
    
    -- Kenny House

re .2: and if the Streams they're mentioning is really the one I 
thought, the replacement would be "TDI". Winsock is an API for 
applications to talk to network protocols, Streams and TDI are APIs 
to *build* network protocols, much more complex, kernel-mode and 
stuff. As Ora said, look at (or refer them to) the DDK CD from MSDN.

	Vincent

    Yepp,
    
    TDI.
    
    TNX!

    Er, streams is actually much more general than network protocols and
    is a way to add, in documented fashion, additional layers of I/O
    processing in device I/O.
    
    While the claim is that NT has this, in fact all those I've ever
    heard of who have been able to use it have had to do LOTS of
    special hacking & disassembly to get anything to work. To say
    that NT has streams in the sense of a documented and usable
    facility strikes me as at this point probably a falsehood. The
    customer may be interested in something other than a network
    protocol, and trying to insert their own processing in a
    device stream (control and data) using unix like facilities will
    be a difficult row to hoe for them. While OVMS does not advertise
    such a feature, it is much easier to do and get to work there
    if one must have a non unix system than in NT, because the
    documentation and examples are available widely and either free
    or inexpensively.
    
    Streams is widely applied in network I/O, but that is very far from
    its only application.  Don't confuse the facility with sockets
    (winsock or otherwise) if you want to look informed.
    
    While streams was developed as a way to provide additional low level
    processing for unix character devices initially, it can be used
    for many sorts of unix devices, including disks, tapes, and terminals
    and the like. It is a very general way to add functionality to I/O
    devices by generalizing the notion of a device.
    
    The NT system is defined to permit this sort of thing, but NT in
    fact has a number of hidden things that will break attempts to use
    the attempts to use such interception. Some may be documented in
    places like filesystem kits for NT. If these are available at
    all (I think not yet) I've been told they're quite costly.
    

    I'd say NT has STREAMS the same way it has POSIX - as a check-the-box
    feature for responding to RFPs.  Nobody in their right mind would use
    either one for serious work on NT.
    
    (IMHO, nobody in their right mind would write a disk driver using the
    STREAMS interface.  Too much overhead.  NT's stacked I/O driver model
    works better for block devices, I think.)
    
    (Carl - who once did a real project using POSIX on VMS and lived to
    tell about it.)