RMI

Remote Method Invocation

15-Mar-12

The network is the computer*

Consider the following program organization:

AnotherClass

returned object
computer 2

If the network is the computer, we ought to be able to put the two classes on different computers RMI is one technology that makes this possible
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* For an opposing viewpoint, see http://www.bbspot.com/News/2001/04/network.html

RMI and other technologies

CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) has long been king

CORBA supports object transmission between virtually any languages Objects have to be described in IDL (Interface Definition Language), which looks a lot like C++ data definitions CORBA is complex and flaky

Microsoft supported CORBA, then COM, now .NET RMI is purely Java-specific

Java to Java communications only As a result, RMI is much simpler than CORBA
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What is needed for RMI

Java makes RMI (Remote Method Invocation) fairly easy, but there are some extra steps To send a message to a remote server object,

The client object has to find the object

Do this by looking it up in a registry

The client object then has to marshal the parameters (prepare them for transmission)

Java requires Serializable parameters The server object has to unmarshal its parameters, do its computation, and marshal its response

The client object has to unmarshal the response

Much of this is done for you by special software

Terminology

A remote object is an object on another computer The client object is the object making the request (sending a message to the other object) The server object is the object receiving the request As usual, client and server can easily trade roles (each can make requests of the other) The rmiregistry is a special server that looks up objects by name

Hopefully, the name is unique!

rmic is a special compiler for creating stub (client) and skeleton (server) classes

Processes

For RMI, you need to be running three processes

The Client The Server The Object Registry, rmiregistry, which is like a DNS service for objects

You also need TCP/IP active

Interfaces

Interfaces define behavior Classes define implementation Therefore,

In order to use a remote object, the client must know its behavior (interface), but does not need to know its implementation (class) In order to provide an object, the server must know both its interface (behavior) and its class (implementation) The interface must be available to both client and server The class should only be on the server
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In short,

Classes

A Remote class is one whose instances can be accessed remotely

On the computer where it is defined, instances of this class can be accessed just like any other object On other computers, the remote object can be accessed via object handles

A Serializable class is one whose instances can be marshaled (turned into a linear sequence of bits)

Serializable objects can be transmitted from one computer to another

It probably isnt a good idea for an object to be both remote and serializable

Conditions for serializability

If an object is to be serialized:

The class must be declared as public The class must implement Serializable The class must have a no-argument constructor All fields of the class must be serializable: either primitive types or serializable objects

Remote interfaces and class

A Remote class has two parts:

The interface (used by both client and server):

Must be public Must extend the interface java.rmi.Remote Every method in the interface must declare that it throws java.rmi.RemoteException (other exceptions may also be thrown) Must implement a Remote interface Should extend java.rmi.server.UnicastRemoteObject May have locally accessible methods that are not in its Remote interface
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The class itself (used only by the server):

Remote vs. Serializable

A Remote object lives on another computer (such as the Server)

You can send messages to a Remote object and get responses back from the object All you need to know about the Remote object is its interface Remote objects dont pose much of a security issue

You can transmit a copy of a Serializable object between computers

The receiving object needs to know how the object is implemented; it needs the class as well as the interface There is a way to transmit the class definition Accepting classes does pose a security issue

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Security

It isnt safe for the client to use somebody elses code on some random server

Your client program should use a more conservative security manager than the default
System.setSecurityManager(new RMISecurityManager());

Most discussions of RMI assume you should do this on both the client and the server

Unless your server also acts as a client, it isnt really necessary on the server

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The server class

The class that defines the server object should extend UnicastRemoteObject

This makes a connection with exactly one other computer If you must extend some other class, you can use exportObject() instead Sun does not provide a MulticastRemoteObject class String url = "rmi://" + host + ":" + port + "/" + objectName;

The server class needs to register its server object:

The default port is 1099

Naming.rebind(url, object);

Every remotely available method must throw a RemoteException (because connections can fail) Every remotely available method should be synchronized
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Hello world server: interface

import java.rmi.*; public interface HelloInterface extends Remote { public String say() throws RemoteException; }

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Hello world server: class

import java.rmi.*; import java.rmi.server.*; public class Hello extends UnicastRemoteObject implements HelloInterface { private String message; // Strings are serializable public Hello (String msg) throws RemoteException { message = msg; } public String say() throws RemoteException { return message; }
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Registering the hello world server

class HelloServer { public static void main (String[] argv) { try { Naming.rebind("rmi://localhost/HelloServer", new Hello("Hello, world!")); System.out.println("Hello Server is ready."); } catch (Exception e) { System.out.println("Hello Server failed: " + e); } } }
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The hello world client program

class HelloClient { public static void main (String[] args) { HelloInterface hello; String name = "rmi://localhost/HelloServer"; try { hello = (HelloInterface)Naming.lookup(name); System.out.println(hello.say()); } catch (Exception e) { System.out.println("HelloClient exception: " + e); } } }
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rmic

The class that implements the remote object should be compiled as usual Then, it should be compiled with rmic:

rmic Hello

This will generate files Hello_Stub.class and Hello_Skel.class These classes do the actual communication

The Stub class must be copied to the client area The Skel was needed in SDK 1.1 but is no longer necessary

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Trying RMI

In three different terminal windows:

If all goes well, you should get the Hello, World! message
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Summary
1. 2.

Start the registry server, rmiregistry Start the object server

The object server registers an object, with a name, with the registry server The client looks up the object in the registry server The request actually goes to the Stub class The Stub classes on client and server talk to each other The clients Stub class returns the result
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3.

Start the client

4.

The client makes a request

References

Trail: RMI
by Ann Wollrath and Jim Waldo

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/rmi/index.html

Fundamentals of RMI Short Course

http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/ rmi/RMI.html

Java RMI Tutorial

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/kenb/com3337/rmi_tut.html
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The End

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