12/01/1992 09:00 AM
Computer Science
With the vastly increased need for computing power in modern computing environments, the ability to distribute jobs across machine boundaries has become essential. The main drawback of distributed computing is the excessive complexity of network programming. One way to solve this problem is to create an environment that emulates the typical programming environment. This is the basis of remote procedure calls (RPC). A remote procedure call is the execution of a procedure that resides on a foreign host. A program at the remote site receives data from the caller, calls the procedure locally, and returns the result. To the programmer, remote procedure calls closely resemble local procedure calls. This is a well developed idea, and a number of RPC packages have been implemented. The problem with most of these packages is that complex initialization routines are required to use them. It is unnecessary to concern the programmer with the underlying connectivity and packet exchange mechanisms required to implement an RPC package. Further, these initialization requirements undermine the central goal of RPC programming: transparent distributed computing. We present a remote procedure call package that has been designed to relieve the programmer of this burden without sacrificing power. Note: M.S. Thesis
