RE: Novell NetWare vs. Microsoft networking

Anyone who has ever run Netware knows the stability of it. It doesn't crash. You don't need to reboot it just because it's been running for a month, or a year, or two.

With Netware, you can change key components of it, e.g. the printing subsystem, without rebooting - UNLOAD SERVICE, (a little file copying), LOAD SERVICE. Even Windows 2003 forces you to reboot for "changes to take effect" all too often.

Those issues are structural - you either designed a strong core to your operating system (Netware) or you hashed together some code from a desktop user OS and added some resource sharing features to it (Windows Server).

The bigger issue I have with Windows networking is NTFS - what were they thinking? It would be difficult to design a more complicated and inefficient file security scheme than NTFS. With NTFS, every single permission is stored with every single file - arrgghh. With Netware, files inherit permissions from the directory/folder it's in - unless you override it; if a directory/folder has no explicit permissions, they are inherited from the parent folder. Netware's approach is 1000 times more efficient, and provides every bit as much control - and actually more because certain attributes such as "Execute Only" don't exist in Windows.

Even more important than efficiency, is effectiveness. In Netware, you can move a file from a less restrictive area to a more restrictive area - and the restrictions are immediate - and require no further action to implement. In Windows, you can move a file from an area (e.g. general staff read-write area) to a more restrictive area (e.g. word processing area where no further edits are allowed by general staff) - and it doesn't always restrict the original author (the "owner) - or rather, it only works (at times, granted most of the time) because of a side effect in the way most Windows applications save files.

The side effect is that most applications first create a completely new file (new file handle), then write that file with a temporary name, then either delete or rename to "backup" the old file, then rename the temporary file to the original filename. The result is that the original author cannot create the temp file needed in the more restrictive area (e.g. word processing), and thus is prevented from editing the file as he should be - but this is a side effect and NOT a requirement imposed by the OS. It works for MS-Word, Excel, and most other apps. Try the same thing with Notepad - Notepad does not use this method - Notepad create only one file handle to the original document - and just writes the changes - in the area where the author should no longer have access - the only way to fix this is to explicitly change NTFS permissions on the file after you most it - this approach is wrong! Windows NTFS file security is fatally flawed - you absolutely must rely on "share" permissions!

Microsoft chose a boneheaded method of file security that is fatally flawed. Use SHARE PERMISSIONS if you have a Windows server.

With Netware, you could have one UNC path for all your data, and provide an extremely efficient and effective (and predictable - easily understandable) set of permissions to your files.

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