Remote Method Invocation (RMI) is the process of activating a method on a remotely running object. RMI offers location transparency in the sense that it gives the feel that a method is executed on a locally running object.
What is the basic principle of RMI architecture?
The RMI architecture is based on one important principle: the definition of behavior and the implementation of that behavior are separate concepts. RMI allows the code that defines the behavior and the code that implements the behavior to remain separate and to run on separate JVMs.
What are the layers of RMI Architecture?
The RMI is built on three layers.
a. Stub and Skeleton layer
This layer lies just beneath the view of the developer. This layer intercepts method calls made by the client to the interface reference variable and redirects these calls to a remote RMI service.
a. Stub and Skeleton layer
This layer lies just beneath the view of the developer. This layer intercepts method calls made by the client to the interface reference variable and redirects these calls to a remote RMI service.
b. Remote Reference Layer.
This layer understands how to interpret and manage references made from clients to the remote service objects. The connection is a one-to-one (unicast) link.
c. Transport layer
This layer is based on TCP/IP connections between machines in a network. It provides basic connectivity, as well as some firewall penetration strategies.
What is the role of Remote Interface in RMI?
The Remote interface serves to identify interfaces whose methods may be invoked from a non-local virtual machine. Any object that is a remote object must directly or indirectly implement this interface. Methods that are to be invoked remotely must be identified in Remote Interface. All Remote methods should throw RemoteException.
Can RMI and Corba based applications interact ?
Yes they can. RMI is available with IIOP as the transport protocol instead of JRMP.
What are the services in RMI ?
An RMI “service” could well be any Java method that can be invoked remotely. The other service is the JRMP RMI naming service which is a lookup service.
How many types of protocol implementations does RMI have?
RMI has at least three protocol implementations: Java Remote Method Protocol(JRMP), Internet Inter ORB Protocol(IIOP), and Jini Extensible Remote Invocation(JERI). These are alternatives, not part of the same thing, All three are indeed layer 6 protocols for those who are still speaking OSI reference model.
Does RMI-IIOP support dynamic downloading of classes?
No, RMI-IIOP doesn’t support dynamic downloading of the classes as it is done with CORBA in DII (Dynamic Interface Invocation).Actually RMI-IIOP combines the usability of Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) with the interoperability of the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP).So in order to attain this interoperability between RMI and CORBA,some of the features that are supported by RMI but not CORBA and vice versa are eliminated from the RMI-IIOP specification.
What is RMI Registry ?
A registry is a remote object that maps names to remote objects. A server registers its remote objects with the registry so that they can be looked up. When an object wants to invoke a method on a remote object, it must first lookup the remote object using its name. The registry returns to the calling object a reference to the remote object, using which a remote method can be invoked.
What are the two important TCP Socket classes?
Socket and ServerSocket. ServerSocket is used for normal two-way socket communication. Socket class allows us to read and write through the sockets. getInputStream() and getOutputStream() are the two methods available in Socket class.