By Jihed Othmani Jing Wang Karim Jouini Mathieu Martin

Outline
The need RPC (Remote Procedure Call)

Quick introduction Samples Advantages & disadvantages Future?

RMI (Remote Method Invocation)

Quick introduction Samples Advantages & disadvantages Future?

WebServices
Quick introduction Samples Advantages & disadvantages

Recap & Conclusion

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The Need
More and more devices are connected, tempting us to

take advantage of their computational capabilities. We would like to communicate, reuse code, share services.
There are a lot of opportunities to leverage services

offered by others and to make your application publicly available. Provide a service without sharing code. So : we need a standardization of protocols to ease communication at the application layer.
Thats what we call middlewares.
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RPC Quick Introduction

First system to address the need to communicate

across process and machines boundaries.

RPC was first described in 1976 by the RFC707. Xerox used RPC in the popular software courier, 1981.

Paradigm: The client process has to know the serving process and instantiates the communication. The client process calls a distant procedure and waits for the response (or fail).
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RPC Samples
A simple server (part 1)

 A simple server (part 2)

 A simple client using our previous server

RPC Advantages
Advantages : Very simple logic and very low level, gives to the programmer a lot of freedom to implement different mechanisms on top of it. Can be implemented by any language (including C !). RPC exists since 1976, so its maturity and solidity are undoubted.

RPC Disadvantages
Using RPC can become very complex The complexity is exposed as the number of procedures Interaction with such a module requires using all these interfaces in the right way and sequence. A lot of code is needed for even simple applications. RPC gives no answer to fundamental questions:

How to find peers ? How to distribute the workload over multiple servers? How failure and recovery should be handled? How to send/receive complex data structures. Security? Sasser, blaster, etc Are RPC-vulnerability exploits

There are multiple different and incompatible RPC

protocols.

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RPC Future ?
RPC is way too complex to be used as middleware in

modern software. RPC can be used as low level layer for more powerful middleware layers, that would be able to provide us with :
OOP Load balancing

Failure detection/correction
Etc

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RMI Quick Introduction

The Java Remote Method Invocation API, or Java RMI,

is a Java application programming interface for performing the object equivalent of Remote Procedure Calls.
There are two common implementations of the API. Java Remote Method Protocol (JRMP) In order to support servers running in a non-JVM context, a CORBA version was later developed. Uses HTTP or IIOP as communication layer.
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RMI Samples
Here is a Server publishing a Hello Object

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RMI Samples
Here is client invoking the previous Hello Object and

calling HelloFromServer() On it !

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RMI Advantages & disadvantages

Advantages Java, so portable and Oriented Object. NAT-Firewall traversal capabilities. Asynchronous possibilities with ARMI (Async-RMI). Easier to use and setup than CORBA. RDMI enables dynamic invocation. First attempt to address security. Latest versions are CORBA-compatible (using IIOP). Disadvantages Java only
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RMI Future ?
RMI still needs to find answers to: How to implement real server-level security ? How to perform load balancing ? How to use RMI in other languages ?

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Web Services Quick Introduction

A software system designed to support interoperable

machine-to-machine interaction over a network.

It refers to clients and servers that communicate over

the HTTP protocol used on the Web.

Web services range from such major services as storage

management down to much more limited services such as the furnishing of a stock quote.
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Web Services Advantages

Universal Support. Protocol not Platform. Low Product Costs. Evolutionary thanks to XML. Business Oriented. The standardized nature of the pieces that implement a Web service solves many problems related to intersystem communication. For example:

The HTTP standard allows more systems to communicate with one another. SOAP (built on XML) standardizes the messaging capability on different systems. UDDI standardizes the publishing and finding of Web services. WSDL standardizes the description of Web services, so providers and requesters speak the same language.

Opportunities to take advantage of services offered by others and to make your applications available to others as a Web service. Mashups (ex: Jogli.com)

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Web Services Disadvantages

No security standards: Web services are exposed to the public

using http-based protocols.

Adopting open security standards like SSL or XML-encryption may

be a solution.

Processing time and data traffic costs are significantly higher Very verbose : Multiplication of the conveyed information mass. But:

To buy a faster CPU is cheaper than employing a programmer and systems administrator capable of handling RMI. Performance differences less marked for more realistic applications than for toys like calculator. You can use cloud systems to easily scale.

No load balancing at the protocol level.

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Web Services Samples

Google's Web Service - access the Google search

engine. Amazon's Web Service - access Amazon's product information . XMethods - collection of information about existing Web services. Getting the last stock quote.

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Recap
RPC Birth Platform Transport Dev Cost 1976 - 1981 Library and OSdependant OS-Dependent Huge RMI ~ 1990 Java HTTP or IIOP Reasonable Web Services ~ 2000 Independent HTTP(s) Low

Security
Overhead Dynamic invocation Versioning Service lookup

None
None None Huge problem Impossible

Client-level
OOP + HTTP Yes, using RDMI Possible using RDMI Java Naming and Directory

Transport Level
XML + HTTP Natural Natural UDDI
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