etäproseduurikutsujen

Etäproseduurikutsujen, often abbreviated as RPC (Remote Procedure Call), is a software communication protocol that allows a program to execute a procedure (subroutine or function) in a different address space, typically on another computer on a shared network, without the programmer explicitly coding the details for this remote interaction. Essentially, RPC enables a client program to call a function on a server program as if it were a local function call.

The core idea behind RPC is to abstract away the complexities of network communication. The client makes a call to a local stub procedure that is linked into the client program. This stub then packages the procedure name and its arguments into a message, often referred to as an RPC request, and sends it across the network to the server. The server, upon receiving the request, unpackages the message, calls the actual procedure, and sends the result back to the client stub. The client stub then unpackages the result and returns it to the original calling program.

Various implementations and protocols exist for RPC, each with its own set of features and optimizations. Common examples include ONC RPC (used in NFS), gRPC, and Thrift. These protocols handle tasks such as data serialization (converting data structures into a format suitable for network transmission) and deserialization, network addressing, and error handling. RPC is widely used in distributed systems, microservices architectures, and client-server applications where different components need to interact seamlessly.