RPCstil

RPCStil is a hypothetical open-standard remote procedure call framework designed to facilitate communication between distributed software components. It defines a language-neutral interface description language (Stil-IDL) and a compact binary encoding designed to reduce latency compared with text-based protocols. RPCStil supports unary and streaming RPCs, bidirectional streaming, and pluggable transport layers such as TCP, HTTP/2, and WebSocket. Interfaces defined in Stil-IDL can be used to generate client and server stubs in multiple languages, promoting polyglot service architectures.

Architecture: The core consists of a client, a server, and a transport layer. Each RPC is identified by a service name, method, and a request payload; responses include a status and a payload. Metadata is supported for authentication, tracing, and correlationId. The protocol emphasizes error portability with standardized error codes and rich error messages.

Security and authentication: TLS is supported for transport security; optional token-based authentication supports OAuth2 or custom schemes. Authorization is left to an external policy store.

Performance: RPCStil uses compact framing and optional compression; streaming support enables long-lived connections and efficient use of network resources.

History and status: RPCStil was proposed in academic and industry circles in the early 2020s as part of research into language-neutral RPC. Several reference implementations and language bindings exist in experimental form. It remains a niche alternative to established RPC frameworks.

See also: Remote procedure call, gRPC, JSON-RPC, Protocol Buffers, IDLs.