RPC Question

[Joshua Levy]

vadi at cs.iastate.edu (Vadivelu Elumalai) writes:

> I am familiar with Sun RPC. But not all systems support Sun RPC. Some support
> Apolla and some Xerox. Is there an RPC which is supported by most of the
> machines? I think SUN RPC is the most widely available. But how can I use
> my RPC calls with the systems that do not support SUN RPC? 

Sun RPC is almost universal on modern UNIX workstations.
If you run into a machine which does not have Sun RPC, but does have
sockets, you can port the code yourself.  It is available on titan.rice.edu,
I think.  I know that Sun RPC is available on the most recent workstations
from Sun, HP/Apollo, IBM, and DEC.  I believe that every UNIX workstation
which supports NFS also supports Sun RPC.  Sun RPC is also available for
VMS, MS-DOS, and at least one IBM mainframe OS, but in those environments
you often need to port or buy it yourself.  On almost all UNIX workstations
it is a standard part of the OS.

I believe that the set of UNIX machines supporting Apollo's RPC is a subset of
the UNIX machines supporting Sun RPC.  I think the situation is similar for
Xerox RPC, but not as absolute.  (ie. There may be a stray machine or
two which support Xerox RPC, but not Sun RPC.)

Summary: Use Sun RPC.  In real life it should be portable.  If worst comes
         to worst, you can always port the RPC code yourself.

Joshua Levy   (joshua at veritas.com)