Difference between revisions of "Remote procedure call"

Revision as of 12:08, 3 March 2016

In distributed computing, a remote procedure call (RPC) is when a computer program causes a procedure (subroutine) to execute in another address space (commonly on another computer on a shared network), which is coded as if it were a normal (local) procedure call, without the programmer explicitly coding the details for the remote interaction.

Description

The programmer writes essentially the same code whether the subroutine is local to the executing program, or remote.

This is a form of client–server interaction (caller is client, executer is server), typically implemented via a request–response message-passing system. The object-oriented programming analog is remote method invocation (RMI).

The RPC model implies a level of location transparency, namely that calling procedures is largely the same whether it is local or remote, but usually they are not identical, so local calls can be distinguished from remote calls.

Remote calls are usually orders of magnitude slower and less reliable than local calls, so distinguishing them is useful.

RPCs are a form of inter-process communication (IPC), in that different processes have different address spaces: if on the same host machine, they have distinct virtual address spaces, even though the physical address space is the same; while if they are on different hosts, the physical address space is different.

Many different (often incompatible) technologies have been used to implement the concept.

See also

• Computer program
• Computer science
• Distributed computing

External links

• Remote procedure call @ Wikipedia