Technical Report DHPC-072 Implementing Asynchronous Remote Method Invocation in Java

Java’s Remote Method Invocation is an example of a synchronous communication mechanism with a well defined protocol. Manysoftware systems require more flexibilityin their communication mechanisms, including asynchronous communication and delayed referencing of objects (Futures). This paper introduces a novel mechanism allowing Java remote objects to use extended communication protocols without changes to the underlying wire or serialisation protocols. These extensions can be utilised bystandard remote objects without additional coding changes and can be incorporated with standard Java clients. This paper explores the possibilities of implementing client controlled versus server controlled asynchronous communication and dynamic selection of protocols through the use of a precompiler for the remote object classes. A discussion of the possibilityof integrating Futures and Batched Futures, and anyrequired programming abstractions, into this mechanism is conducted. It is proposed that this mechanism can be used in anyobject system that is based on Fragmented Objects, which use a stub or proxyto provide transparent access to remote server methods