The DCE CDS naming adapter offers a distributed, replicated repository service for the names, addresses, and attributes of objects across the network. Because servers register their name and address information in the DCE CDS naming adapter, Oracle clients can make location-independent connections to Oracle servers. An Oracle utility is provided to load the Oracle service names with corresponding connect descriptors into the DCE CDS naming adapter. After the names are loaded, Oracle connect descriptors can be viewed from a central location with standard DCE tools, and services can be relocated without any changes to the client configuration.