OSF DCE Application Development Guide--Introduction and Style Guide
Introduction to DCE Application Programming
RPC
interface
RPC
interface
Client
stub
Server
stub
RPC
runtime
RPC
runtime
Calling
code
Remote
procedure
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RPCClient
RPC Server
return
data
input arguments
apparent path
of data
due to IDL
Actual path of data
and RPC
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Once the work of defining an interface has been completed, the task of implementing the
interface (that is, coding the operations, along with the rest of the necessary initialization
and management routines, in some programming language) begins. The rest of this
chapter consists of detailed explanations of the DCE application development steps from
start to finish. For a practical example of the result of such a process, refer to the code
for the DCE sample application, which is reprinted in full in the appendix of this book.
Each of the DCE components (with the exception of CDS, which is accessed through the
RPC NS API) is discussed in depth in separate parts of this guide. You should also refer
often to the OSF DCE Application Development Reference, which contains reference
pages for all of the DCE library routines mentioned in the following sections.
1.2 Overview of DCE Application Development Steps
The rest of this chapter consists of a step-by-step checklist of every single one of the
decisions that a programmer must make in developing a typical DCE application. Each
set of decisions or choices is combined into one step. The combination of all these steps
takes you from the initial coding stages into and through the normal course of execution
of the application itself. The underlying intention of this arrangement is to give you a
useful mental model of the overall code development process.
The four basic phases of DCE application development are as follows:
A. CLIENT and SERVER: Define the IDL interface [Steps A1 to A4]
B. SERVER: Set up and listen [Steps B1 to B8]
C. CLIENT: Bind to and invoke the server [Steps C1 to C4]
D. SERVER: Service request(s) [Steps D1 to D5]
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