Automated Development of Distributed Applications

The complications of layering in the OSI model come to a head in the Session Layer and a number of recent developments have 'bypassed' many of the OSI layers.

These include, and have been motivated by :

• Speed,
• Distributed and replicated file systems,
• Remote process invocation and control,
• Network-aware programming languages, such as Java, and
• Increased need for distributed security.

   

The Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Paradigm

The remote procedure call (RPC) paradigm [BJ Nelson, 1981] and [AD Birrell and BJ Nelson, 1984] is based on the observation that procedure calls are a well understood mechanism for control transfer.

The proposal is that procedure calls may be consistently extended to access remote environments (other machines).

When a remote procedure call is invoked :

• The calling environment is suspended,
• Any parameters are passed (marshalled) across the network to the remote environment,
• The required procedure is executed in the remote environment, and
• Results are marshalled back to the caller and its execution resumes.

See: Implementing Remote Procedure Calls, Birrell, Andrew D. and Nelson, Bruce Jay, in ACM Trans. Comput. Systems, 2(1), pp39-59, February 1984.