Summary

Programming with RPC allows the programmer to write distributed applications whereby a process residing on one workstation can request another "remote" workstation to execute a specified procedure. Because of their complexity, most RPC-based programs make use of a protocol compiler such as Sun Microsystems's rpcgen . A protocol compiler provides the basic programming framework for the RPC-based application. In RPC applications the client and server processes do not need to know the details of underlying network protocols. Data passed between the processes is converted to/from an external data representation (XDR) format by predefined filters. Beneath the covers, RPC-based programs make use of the socket interface to carry out their communications. While not discussed in this chapter, RPC does support authentication techniques to facilitate secure client server communications.