The Apple Computer Inc Macintosh’s involvement with NetWare has mainly been at the print-sharing and file-sharing level to date: the gateway provided via Novell Inc’s NetWare Loadable Module. But Infoworld reports that the Provo, Utah-based networking company is beta testing a Macintosh NetWare requester that will have the machines talking native IPX for the first time. The product, MacNDS, is due to ship this spring and will enable NetWare system management software to control Macs properly for the first time. It also enables Macintosh to use NetWare Directory Services. Enthusiastic beta testers that talked to the US paper describe the software as giving them the same access to a multi-server set-up as personal computers; it is expected at around the the same time as NetWare 4. Native IPX support should make large NetWare-based corporates less wary of having a few Macs scattered around their networks, and should encourage Macintosh support among database firms such as Oracle Corp, Gupta Corp and Sybase Inc that already have Loadable Module implementations.
