gene@ponder.csci.unt.edu (Gene De Lisa) (03/22/91)
My development group is now in the process of designing a future hardware and software platform for our product. We require both an internal technique for our various processes to communicate with each other, and also a well-defined interface by which new processes can be written (by somebody else) to exchange data with our programs. It seems to me that the RPC mechanism is well suited to both tasks. However, I don't want to start using something that is non-standard or will be phased out within a few years. (This is why we don't want to use sockets.) Given a SPARC platform, it seems that the choice is between using TLI or using RPC. Is RPC generally viewed as an excentric Sun specific oddity, or is it the wave of the future? I hope this question does not have religious overtones . . . Any insights, advice, or telling of the future would be appreciated. Please send mail to tim@grenada.bellcore.com (not to tim@grenada.uucp, that goes to Island Graphics and they probably know this stuff already). Thanks! Tim J Ihde tim@grenada.bellcore.com (908) 699-2487
fkittred@spca.bbn.com (Fletcher Kittredge) (03/26/91)
In article <2031@brchh104.bnr.ca> gene@ponder.csci.unt.edu (Gene De Lisa) writes: >Given a SPARC platform, it seems that the choice is between using TLI or >using RPC. Is RPC generally viewed as an excentric Sun specific oddity, >or is it the wave of the future? I hope this question does not have >religious overtones . . . Since this is a frequently asked question, I will respond via the newsgroup. This should not be a religious question, but there is much money involved and money makes for religon. It doesn't make much sense to have a RPC mechanism which is platform specific. Sun RPC is the defacto standard and is demonstrably available on a wide range of Unix boxes (since it is the basis of NFS). However, there is a competing standard, OFS DCE (NCS). This RPC protocol is available on a smaller range of Unix boxes, not including the SPARC platform (from Sun, available from third parties). RPC and IPC are areas of standardiza- tion being attacked by the POSIX effort. It is unlikely that the IEEE will pick unmodified Sun RPC as the basis for a standard. You don't even want to use TLI. TLI is not widely available and does not have the functionality of RPC. So the answer is "no". Sun RPC is not an excentric Sun specific oddity, and it is not the wave of the future. Your best bet is to define your application's design in such a way as to make the RPC portion easily replacable, and go with Sun RPC for the current time on the SPARC platform. regards, Fletcher Kittredge Platforms and Tools Group, BBN Software Products 10 Fawcett Street, Cambridge, MA. 02138 617-873-3465 / fkittred@bbn.com / fkittred@das.harvard.edu