Remote method invocation(RMI)

Remote method invocation(RMI)

Design Issues for RMI

·        Two design issues that arise in extension of local method invocation for RMI

o   The choice of invocation semantics

·        Although local invocations are executed exactly once, this cannot always be the case for RMI due to transmission error

o   Either request or reply message may be lost

o   Either server or client may be crashed

o   The level of transparency

·        Make remote invocation as much like local invocation as possible

RMI Design Issues: Invocation Semantics

·        Error handling for delivery guarantees

o   Retry request message: whether to retransmit the request message until either a reply is received or the server is assumed to have failed

o   Duplicate filtering: when retransmissions are used, whether to filter out duplicate requests at the server

o   Retransmission of results: whether to keep a history of result messages to enable lost results to be retransmitted without re-executing the operations

·        Choices of invocation semantics

o   Maybe: the method executed once or not at all (no retry nor retransmit)

o   At-least-once: the method executed at least once

o   At-most-once: the method executed exactly once

Invocation semantics: choices of interest

RMI Design Issues: Transparency

·        Transparent remote invocation: like a local call

o   marshalling/unmarshalling

o   locating remote objects

o   accessing/syntax

·        Differences between local and remote invocations

o   latency: a remote invocation is usually several order of magnitude greater than that of a local one

o   availability: remote invocation is more likely to fail

o   errors/exceptions: failure of the network? server? hard to tell

·        syntax might need to be different to handle different local vs remote errors/exceptions (e.g. Argus)

o   consistency on the remote machine:

·        Argus: incomplete transactions, abort, restore states [as if the call was never made]

Implementation of RMI

·        •Communication module

o   Two cooperating communication modules carry out the request-reply protocols: message type, request ID, remote object reference

·        Transmit request and reply messages between client and server

·        Implement specific invocation semantics

o   The communication module in the server

·        selects the dispatcher for the class of the object to be invoked,

·        passes on local reference from remote reference module,

·        returns request

The role of proxy and skeleton in remote method invocation

Remote reference module

o   Responsible for translating between local and remote object references and for creating remote object references

o   remote object table: records the correspondence between local and remote object references

–       remote objects held by the process (B on server)

–       local proxy (B on client)

o   When a remote object is to be passed for the first time, the module is asked to create a remote object reference, which it adds to its table

Servant

–       An instance of a class which provides the body of a remote object

–       handles the remote requests

•RMI software

–       Proxy: behaves like a local object, but represents the remote object

–       Dispatcher: look at the methodID and call the corresponding method in the skeleton

–       Skeleton: implements the method

Generated automatically by an interface compiler

Implementation Alternatives of RMI

Dynamic invocation

Proxies are static—interface complied into client code

Dynamic—interface available during run time

Generic invocation; more info in ―Interface Repository‖ (COBRA)

Dynamic loading of classes (Java RMI)

•Binder

A separate service to locate service/object by name through table mapping for names and remote object references

Activation of remote objects

o   Motivation: many server objects not necessarily in use all of the time

§  Servers can be started whenever they are needed by clients, similar to inetd

o   Object status: active or passive

§  active: available for invocation in a running process

§  passive: not running, state is stored and methods are pending

o   Activation of objects:

§  creating an active object from the corresponding passive object by creating a new instance of its class

§  initializing its instance variables from the stored state

o   Responsibilities of activator

§  Register passive objects that are available for activation

§  Start named server processes and activate remote objects in them

§  Keep track of the locations of the servers for remote objects that it has already activated

Persistent object stores

o   An object that is guaranteed to live between activations of processes is called a

o   persistent object

o   Persistent object store: managing the persistent objects

o   stored in marshaled from on disk for retrieval

o   saved those that were modified

o   Deciding whether an object is persistent or not:

o   persistent root: any descendent objects are persistent (persistent Java, PerDiS)

o   some classes are declared persistent (Arjuna system)

o   Object location

o   specifying a location: ip address, port #, ...

o   location service for migratable objects

o   Map remote object references to their probable current locations

§  Cache/broadcast scheme (similar to ARP)

o   Cache locations

o   If not in cache, broadcast to find it

o   Improvement: forwarding (similar to mobile IP)

Distributed Garbage Collection

–       Aim: ensure that an object

o   continues to exist if a local or remote reference to it is still held anywhere

o   be collected as soon as no object any longer holds a reference to it

–       General approach: reference count

–       Java's approach

o   the server of an object (B) keeps track of proxies

o   when a proxy is created for a remote object

–       addRef(B) tells the server to add an entry

o   when the local host's garbage collector removes the proxy

–       removeRef(B) tells the server to remove the entry

o   when no entries for object B, the object on server is deallocated