What is the role of Nutcracker in Shareplex in Shareplex for NT or Windows? (4300696)

When running Shareplex in a Windows environment, there is an additional software layer named NuTCRACKER required for Shareplex to function.  This solution delves on why it is required.

N.A.

NuTCRACKER is a software porting tool developed by Mortice Kern Systems for converting Unix/Linux applications to Windows. Shareplex uses the NuTCRACKER operating environment to run on Windows systems. Certain applications are designed to initially run on Unix and later on need to be developed/run on Windows. Tools like NuTCRACKER make this interoperability possible in a seamless manner. It provides a set of UNIX-named utilities that work under NT platform. If you wanted to issue "ls -l" instead of "dir", it will let you do it. There are complete shells included with the Toolkit component, so you can do shell scripting and use any of the hundreds of UNIX utilities provided. It provides numerous APIs for porting to NT's development platform from a number of UNIX versions. It also has set of conversion utilities that let you update legacy UNIX applications to take advantage of current OS features. In short, from Shareplex perspective, it lets the programs developed earlier for Unix be compiled and run conveniently in a Windows or NT environment.

The NuTCRACKER software that users have installed on their machine is a runtime module that helps run the Shareplex programs compiled earlier using full blown NuTCRACKER software.

The following is an excerpt from Shareplex Admin Guide which describes how the users do not need to interact with NuTCRACKER, and that the above happens behind the scene:

The MKS Platform Components

SharePlex on the Windows platform uses the NuTCRACKER® operating environment
from Mortice Kern Systems (MKS). NuTCRACKER runs as a service and enables
SharePlex to be ported to the UNIX and Windows platforms in a uniform manner.
SharePlex users have no interaction with the NuTCRACKER software, other than to
ensure that its service is running when the SharePlex service is running. NuTCRACKER
is installed in automatic startup mode by default when it is installed during
SharePlex installation. There is a Windows Registry entry for NuTCRACKER under the manufacturer's name,
"Mortice Kern Systems," and another under the name "DataFocus." The default folder
for NuTCRACKER is C:\NuTCROOT, but a different folder might have been selected
during installation. The NuTCRACKER files must not be moved after they are installed.