Title :
NoWait-RPC: extending ONC RPC to a fully compatible message passing system
Author :
Hopfner, Thomas ; Fischer, Franz ; Färber, Georg
Author_Institution :
Lab. for Process Control & Real-Time Syst., Tech. Univ. Munchen, Germany
fDate :
30 Mar-3 Apr 1998
Abstract :
Locally and functionally distributed applications realized on different system architectures demand a universal, portable and intuitive software utility for interprocess communication. Remote Procedure Calling (RPC) fulfills these requirements but suffers unnecessarily strict synchronization and the danger of deadlocks with complex client/server relations. Using message passing to avoid the inherent problems of RPC, however requires additional knowledge and sometimes a complete structural redesign. This paper presents NoWait-RPC, an extended but fully compatible version of SUN´s Open Network Computing Group´s ONC RPC, which adds message passing capabilities to form an easy to use programming environment for robust system integration. NoWait-RPC was developed to resolve potentially arising deadlocks in an already RPC-based complex application. It is designed to be a plug-and-play substitute for ONC RPC and consists of the library and the extended protocol compiler nwrpcgen. Additionally, applications using the asynchronous (non-blocking) features of NoWait-RPC may experience a major speedup compared to ONC RPC through pipelining calls to different servers. It has successfully been employed in a research programme dealing with the development of autonomous mobile robots
Keywords :
message passing; protocols; remote procedure calls; NoWait-RPC; Remote Procedure Calling; client/server; deadlocks; extended protocol compiler; interprocess communication; message passing; pipelining calls; Application software; Communication system software; Computer architecture; Computer networks; Message passing; Network servers; Programming environments; Robustness; Sun; System recovery;
Conference_Titel :
Parallel Processing Symposium, 1998. IPPS/SPDP 1998. Proceedings of the First Merged International ... and Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing 1998
Conference_Location :
Orlando, FL
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-8404-6
DOI :
10.1109/IPPS.1998.669920