Glossary

RPC Programming Terms

The following terms define the RPC concepts used throughout this manual.

client

A program or system that uses the services of a remote program or system.

client handle

A client process data structure that represents the binding of the client to a particular server's RPC program.

connection-oriented transport

See stream transport.

connectionless transport

See datagram transport.

datagram transport

Datagram transports have less overhead than connection-oriented transports but are considered less reliable and data transmissions are limited by buffer size.

deserialize

Convert data from XDR format to a machine-specific representation.

handle

An abstraction used by the service libraries to refer to a file or a file-like object such as a socket.

host

A computer (mainframe, mini, server, workstation, or personal computer) connected to a network.

MT hot

An interface is multithreaded hot if the library or call automatically creates threads.

MT safe

An interface is multithreaded safe if it can be called in a threaded environment. An MT-safe interface may be invoked concurrently for multiple threads.

network client

Usually client. A process that makes remote procedure calls to services.

network server

Usually server. A process that performs a network service. A server may support more than one version of a remote program to be forward compatible with changing protocols.

network service

A collection of one or more remote service programs.

ping

The ping service is used to verify activity on a remote system.

remote program

A program that implements one or more remote procedures.

RPC Language (RPCL)

A C-like programming language translated by the rpcgen compiler. RPCL is a superset of XDR Language.

RPC library

libnsl, specified to the link editor at compile time. Also known as the RPC package.

RPC protocol

The message-passing protocol that is the basis of the RPC package.

RPC/XDR

See RPC Language.

serialize

Converting data from a machine representation to XDR format.

server

A process that provides remote service to clients.

stream transport

Stream transport is considered reliable. It supports byte-stream deliveries of unlimited data size.

transport

The fourth layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Reference Model.

transport handle

An abstraction used by the RPC libraries to refer to the transport's data structures.

TI-RPC

Transport-independent RPC. The version of RPC supported in SunOS 5.x.

TS-RPC

Transport-specific RPC. The version of RPC supported in SunOS 4.x. TS-RPC is also supported in SunOS 5.x.

universal address

A machine-independent representation of a transport address.

virtual circuit transport

See streamtransport.

XDR Language

A data description language and data representation protocol.