About three weeks since I started investigating Objects and Interfaces. I've just managed to call a remote method. object.doSomething(22); returns the value 66. Remote procedure call(RPC) techniques like this remind me of a conversation I had last week with a friend. We were discussing the fact that I'm currently putting a lot of effort into developing a light switch which if I'm lucky could possibly turn on a light. Fifteen years of computer science training and experience culminating in the ability to flick a switch and turn on a light! Thankfully, the underlying techniques have a much broader application than a single switch.

This is the second iteration of the underlying RPC mechanism. The previous version relied on matching data types dynamically with methods on the server. This version creates an IDL style description of the methods which are then bound to the implementation interfaces. This allows the client and server to check the signature before making a call. If the client signature differs from the servers, the client can fail safely. I'm continually impressed with how the strong data contract between client and server allows me to quickly debug the communication aspects of the system.

Now the Java implementation is working I can move back to C and see how small I can build a service.