Technical reports

A remote procedure call system

Kenneth Graham Hamilton

December 1984, 109 pages

This technical report is based on a dissertation submitted December 1984 by the author for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the University of Cambridge, Wolfson College.

DOI: 10.48456/tr-70

Abstract

The provision of a suitable means for communication between software modules on different machines is a recognized problem in distributed computing research. Recently the use of language-level Remote Procedure Call (RPC) has been advocated as a solution to this problem.

This thesis discusses the rationale, design, implementation and supporting environment of a flexible RPC system for an extended version of the CLU programming language. It is argued that earlier RPC systems have adopted an undesirably rigid stance by attempting to make remotre procedure calls look as similar as possible to local procedure calls. It is suggested instead that the inevitable differences in performance and failure properties between local and remote calls should be regarded as being essentially different from local calls. Following from this, it is proposed that RPC systems should offer at least two complementary call mechanisms. One of these should attempt to recover from network errors and should only report unrecoverable failures. The other should never attempt automatic recovery from network errors, thereby giving implementors the convenience of a language-level mechanism without losing sight of the underlying network.

Other specific areas that are discussed include binding issues, protocols, transmission mechanisms for standard data types, and the particular problems posed by abstract data types. A new transfer mechanism for abstract types is proposed which would permit software using new representations to communicate with software using earlier representations. The provision of special operating system support for the CLU RPC mechanism is also discussed.

Full text

PDF (6.2 MB)

BibTeX record

@TechReport{UCAM-CL-TR-70,
  author =	 {Hamilton, Kenneth Graham},
  title = 	 {{A remote procedure call system}},
  year = 	 1984,
  month = 	 dec,
  url = 	 {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-70.pdf},
  institution =  {University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
  doi = 	 {10.48456/tr-70},
  number = 	 {UCAM-CL-TR-70}
}