Automating Type-safe RPC

It is generally accepted that the possibility of a procedure in one program to call a procedure in another program is a useful paradigm for developing distributed applications. However, in a distributed environment, programs should be allowed to be built and then changed in an independent manner, thus allowing inconsistent types to be declared in the expected and the actual remote procedure interface. If one cannot guarantee type consistency, the program executing the remote procedure would be vulnerable to invalid call requests. The paper describes how a persistent programming language can be used to implement an RPC mechanism that automatically supports type-safety. It is typesafe since the expected interface is checked against the actual remote procedure interface before a call is attempted and automatic because user intervention is only that needed otherwise (that is, to call a local procedure). Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Design Issues 2 2.1 The RPC Mechanism : : : : : : : : :..