What is RMI? Discuss stub and skeleton. Explain its role in creating distributed applications.
The RMI (Remote Method Invocation) is an API that provides a mechanism to create distributed application in java. The RMI allows an object to invoke methods on an object running in another JVM. The RMI provides remote communication between the applications using two objects stub and skeleton. RMI applications often comprise two separate programs, a server and a client. A typical server program creates some remote objects, makes references to these objects accessible, and waits for clients to invoke methods on these objects. A typical client program obtains a remote reference to one or more remote objects on a server and then invokes methods on them.
RMI provides the mechanism by which the server and the client communicate and pass information back and forth. A primary goal for the RMI designers was to allow programmers to develop distributed Java programs with the same syntax and semantics used for non-distributed programs. To do this, they had to carefully map how Java classes and objects work in a single Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to a new model of how classes and objects would work in a distributed (multiple JVM) computing environment.
Stub and Skeleton Layer
The stub/skeleton layer is the interface between the application layer and the rest of the RMI system. This layer does not deal with specifics of any transport, but transmits data to the remote reference layer by using marshaling. It also takes data from remote reference layer by using unmarshalling or demarshalling.
During communication between two machines through RPC or RMI, parameters are packed into a message and then sent over the network. This packing of parameters into a message is called marshalling. On the other side these packed parameters are unpacked from the message which is called unmarshalling.
A stub for a remote object is the client-side proxy for the remote object. Such a stub implements all the interfaces that are supported by the remote object implementation. A client-side stub is responsible for:
- Initiating a call to the remote object
- Marshaling arguments
- Informing the remote reference layer that the call should be invoked
- Unmarshaling the return value or exception from a marshal stream.
- Informing the remote reference layer that the call is complete. -
- A skeleton for a remote object is a server-side entity that contains a method which dispatches calls to the actual remote object implementation.
The skeleton is responsible for:
- Unmarshaling arguments.
- Making the up-call to the actual remote object implementation.
- Marshaling the return value of the call or an exception.
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