Transport-independent remote procedure call

Developed by Sun Microsystems, remote procedure call (RPC) easily separates and distributes client applications from a server mechanism.

RPC includes a standard for data representation, called eXternal Data Representation (XDR), to allow more than one type of machine to access transmitted data. Transport-independent RPC (TI-RPC) is the latest version of RPC. It provides a method of separating the underlying protocol that is used at the network layer, providing a more seamless transition from one protocol to another. The only protocols that are currently available on the iSeries™ server are TCP and UDP.

Developing distributed applications across a network is a seamless task when using RPC. The primary targets are applications that gravitate more towards distributing the user interface or data retrieval.

Network selection APIs
These APIs provide the means to choose the transport on which an application should run.
Name-to-address translation APIs
These APIs allow an application to obtain the address of a service or a specified host in a transport-independent manner.
eXternal Data Representation (XDR) APIs
These APIs allow RPC applications to handle arbitrary data structures, regardless of their different hosts' byte orders or structure layout conventions.
Authentication APIs
These APIs provide authentication to the TI-RPC applications.
Transport Independent RPC (TI-RPC) APIs
These APIs provide a distributed application development environment by isolating the application from any specific transport feature. This adds ease-of-use to the transports.

Parent topic: Integrated file system