OSF DCE Application Development Guide--Core Components

OSF DCE Application Development Guide—Core Components
A distributes application uses dispersed computing resources such as CPUs, databases,
devices, and services. The following are examples:
• A calendar-management application that allows authorized users to access the
personal calendars of other users.
• A graphics application that processes data on central CPUs and displays the results
on workstations.
• A manufacturing application that shares information about assembly components
among design, inventory, scheduling, and accounting programs located on different
computers.
DCE RPC meets the basic requirements of a distributed application, including
• Clients finding the appropriate servers
• Data conversion for operating in a heterogeneous environment
• Network communications
Distributed applications include tasks such as managing communications, finding
servers, providing security, and so forth. A standalone distributed application needs to
perform all of these tasks itself. Without a convenient mechanism for these distributed
computing tasks, writing distributed applications is difficult, expensive, and error-prone.
DCE RPC software provides the code, called stubs, and the RPC runtime that perform
distributed computing tasks for your applications. This code and the runtime libraries are
linked with client and server application code to form an RPC application.
Table 11-1 shows the basic tasks for the client and server of a distributed application.
Calling the procedure and executing the remote procedure, shown in bold text, are
performed by your application code (just as in a local application) but here they are in
the client and server address spaces. For the other tasks, some are performed
automatically by the stubs and RPC runtime, while others are performed by the RPC
runtime via API calls in your application.
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