Remote Procedure Call (RPC) APIs

The Remote Procedure Call (RPC) APIs enable distributed applications to communicate with each other. Open Networking Computers (ONC) RPC was developed by Sun Microsystems and is used to easily separate and distribute a client application from a server by using the SUN RPC protocol. RPC includes a method of abstracting data, called eXternal Data Representation, or XDR, to allow communications to be abstracted at the API level.

Transport-Independent RPC (TI-RPC), or ONC+ RPC, is the latest incantation of RPC. It provides a method of abstracting the underlying protocol used at the network layer, providing a more seamless transition from one protocol to another.

These APIs are intended for programmers who are developing distributed applications.

The following terms relate to the RPC applications:

RPCBind

A daemon program that allows client programs to obtain the aress of a service that is registered with the RPCBind daemon.

RPCGen

A compiler that accepts a remote-program interface definition written in the RPC language (RPCL), which is similar to the C programming language. From this definition, RPCGen produces C-language output for client stub functions, a server skeleton, XDR filter routines, and a header file.

For more information on RPCBind and RPCGen, see the Control Language in the Information Center.

The RPC APIs are described according to their functions: authentication, name-to-aress translation, network selection, Transport-Independent Remote Procedure Calls (TI-RPC), and eXternal Data Representation (XDR).

The following is a brief description of each type of function:

• Authentication APIs
  Provide authentication to the Transport-Independent Remote Procedure Call (TI-RPC) applications.

• Name-to-Address Translation APIs
  Allow an application to obtain the aress of a service or a specified host in a transport-independent manner.

• Network Selection APIs
  Provide the means to choose the transport on which an application should run.

• Transport-Independent Remote Procedure Call (TI-RPC) APIs
  Provide a distributed application development environment while isolating the application from any specific transport feature so that all transports can be used with ease. These APIs are divided into five separate sections: simplified level, top level, intermediate level, expert level, and others.

• External Data Representation (XDR) APIs
  Allow Remote Procedure Call (RPC) applications to handle arbitrary data structures, regardless of their different hosts' byte orders or structure layout conventions.

Note: These functions use header (include) files from the library QSYSINC, which is optionally installable. Make sure QSYSINC is installed on your system before using any of the functions. See for the file and member name of each header file.

For more information about these APIs, see the articles about TI-RPC in the AS/400 Information Center.