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Do We Need Another OO RPC Mechanism?

Posted by Cliff on from the variety-is-good-when-it's-necessary dept.

Paul68 queries: "I am looking for an RPC mechanism for a project. Granted, there are many to choose from, yet there seem none that meet my requirements! When one has toyed with the requirements the solution generaly becomes obvious. So, yeah sure, I can set out and create the next RPC mechanism, but it is a lot of hassle. But does the world need yet another OORPC, or have I simply not looked in the right corners?"

"My requirements are:

  1. object oriented
  2. extensible
  3. platform independent
  4. supports signatures for integrity and sender checking
  5. supports privacy of the message contents (i.e. encryption)
  6. time sensitive: I should be able to detect a dead server and do failover while the user is waiting for the response
  7. bandwidth efficient, as I am looking to deploy it in wireless environments
Now #1-3 are no problem, #4 and #5 can be found, and #7 rules out anything XML-based. #6 seems to be the killer, as this rules out anything over TCP, and at that point the list gets pretty short.

Does anyone have any options that I may have missed?"

2 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. You don't mention... by ThenAgain · · Score: 5, Informative
    what you've already looked at. Whenever I've been tempted to implement my own RPC mechanism I've found that XML-RPC meets my needs perfectly.

    It's easily capable of representing objects, platform independent, encryptable (via SSL), compressable (via gzip [and probably SSL as well]), and textual.

    The advantages of being textual in your protocols is well laid out in Eric Raymond's book The Art of Unix Programming. He even treats it as a case study.

  2. NML by kinema · · Score: 5, Informative

    You might want to take a look at the Neutral Message Language, NML. Developed at the Intelligent Systems Division of the National Instute of Standards and Technology is was intended from the start for use in real-time/time critical situations. I know that it currently has support cor C, C++ and Java.