THE WHATIS.COM WORD-OF-THE-DAY December 26, 2001 Remote Procedure Call ______________ TODAY'S SPONSOR: VeriSign - The Value of Trust
FREE E-COMMERCE SECURITY GUIDE from VeriSign. Want to kick your online sales to the next level -- while protecting your company from online fraud? And do it QUICKLY, AFFORDABLY and SECURELY? Get your FREE copy of "How to Build an E-Commerce Web Site" today: http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;3731808;5058249;o?http://www.verisign.com/cgi-bin/go.cgi?a=n095155740616000 ______________ TODAY'S WORD: Remote Procedure Call See our definition with hyperlinks at http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci214272,00.html Remote Procedure Call (RPC) is a protocol that one program can use to request a service from a program located in another computer in a network without having to understand network details. (A procedure call is also sometimes known as a function call or a subroutine call.) RPC uses the client/server model. The requesting program is a client and the service-providing program is the server. Like a regular or local procedure call, an RPC is a synchronous operation requiring the requesting program to be suspended until the results of the remote procedure are returned. However, the use of lightweight processes or threads that share the same address space allows multiple RPCs to be performed concurrently. When program statements that use RPC are compiled into an executable program, a stub is included in the compiled code that acts as the representative of the remote procedure code. When the program is run and the procedure call is issued, the stub receives the request and forwards it to a client runtime program in the local computer. The client runtime program has the knowledge of how to address the remote computer and server application and sends the message across the network that requests the remote procedure. Similarly, the server includes a runtime program and stub that interface with the remote procedure itself. Results are returned the same way. There are several RPC models and implementations. A popular model and implementation is the Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers defines RPC in its ISO Remote Procedure Call Specification, ISO/IEC CD 11578 N6561, ISO/IEC, November 1991. RPC spans the Transport layer and the Application layer in the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model of network communication. RPC makes it easier to develop an application that includes multiple programs distributed in a network. Alternative methods for client/server communication include message queueing and IBM's Advanced Program-to-Program Communication (APPC). RELATED TERMS: protocol http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci212839,00.html synchronous http://whatis.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid9_gci213080,00.html stub http://whatis.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid9_gci213061,00.html Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci211906,00.html _________________ SELECTED LINKS DSPS, a programming company that specializes in distributed computing, provides an introduction to DCE. http://www.dsps.net/dcemenu.html NIST offers a comparison of RPC approaches from ONC (Sun), DCE, and OSI. http://hissa.nist.gov/rbac/5277/titlerpc.html ____________________________________ DO YOU KNOW ME? YOU SHOULD! | Quiz #18 Who invented CTRL-ALT-DELETE? Whose voice greets AOL users each day with "Welcome, you've got mail"? Test your knowledge of computer trivia and learn something new along the way! >>Go to quiz: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci787751,00.html ______________________ WIN AN XBOX | HELP YOUR PEERS Tell your peers about our helpful definitions, industry news, and Fast References - and an XBox Video Game System could be yours. Click here for info on how to win: http://whatis.techtarget.com/referFriendContest/1,290949,sid9,00.html?promo_code=xbox ______________________________________ STORAGE MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE | Hosted by searchStorage Update: Gain critical business continuity strategies plus backup and disaster recovery expertise at the only independent storage-specific conference focused on storage management. Apply early to qualify to attend FREE at: http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;3559407;5058249;r?http://www.storagemanagement2002.com _________________________ RECENT ADDITIONS AND UPDATES [1] chaffing and winnowing http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci786707,00.html [2] operational data store http://searchdatabase.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid13_gci786730,00.html [3] Our latest discovery http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci331047,00.html [4] SWIFT http://searchebusiness.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci786981,00.html [5] MDI/MDIX http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci786996,00.html ======================================================== If you would like to sponsor this or any techtarget newsletter, please contact Gabrielle DeRussy at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ======================================================== If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter simply reply to this message with "REMOVE" in the subject line. Or, visit http://WhatIs.techtarget.com/register and adjust your subscriptions accordingly. If you choose to unsubscribe using our automated processing, you must send the "REMOVE" request from the email account to which this newsletter was delivered. Please allow 24 hours for your "REMOVE" request to be processed.
