D

datagram

Describes a communications protocol or transport in which data packets are routed independently of each other and may follow different routes and arrive in a different order from which they were sent. UDP and IPX are examples of transport-layer datagram protocols. See also connection-oriented.

discriminated union

(or variant record) A union that includes a discriminator as part of the data structure so that the currently valid data type is transmitted along with the union. See also encapsulated union, non-encapsulated union.

Distributed Computing Environment (DCE)

The Open Software Foundation's specification for a set of integrated services, including remote procedure calls, distributed file systems, and security services. The OSF-DCE RPC standard is the basis for Microsoft RPC.

dynamic endpoint

An endpoint (network-specific server address) that is requested and assigned at run time. See also well-known endpoint.