RMI Tutorial for Beginners Java

For easy understanding of RMI concept, RMI Tutorial is given in Questions and Answers format. This style we adopted in constructors Tutorial for Beginners which was very successful.

1. What is Java RMI?

RMI stands for "Remote Method Invocation", the technology of Java.

2. What is remote method?

A method of a Java program placed on any other system (not in your own system) in the world.

3. Then what is invocation?

Sending a request to the other system (say, a server) to execute the method (say, to call as remote method) available on it by passing sufficient parameters required for the execution of the method and asking to return the return value of the method.

Finally, RMI is nothing but communication between two JVMs loaded on two different systems.

4. Give a practical example, to be more clear in this RMI tutorial?

Take an example of a Bank ATM operation. Suppose you are to ATM to know the account balance. You know the balance is available on the bank server and not on ATM machine (say, ATM client). When you swipe your card your account number goes into the machine and inform the machine that you need to know the balance by clicking the button. Now there are two values to be send to the server (we call these as parameters later), one is account number and the other is what the operation you need.

Now imagine, there is a method on the server (we call remote method as it is not avilable on your local ATM system) which will take care of your need, say "public double getBalance(int accountNumber, double retrieveBalance)". Now RMI job is to take your information and send it as parameters to the remote method, execute the method and send back the account balance as return value to the ATM client to print the label.

This is exactly what RMI application does.

5. What is distributed communication? Explain for beginners

RMI sort of communication is an example of distributed communication where systems are distributed across the globe. Here Internet is not used and where it differs with Servlet communication. The systems involved in communication are known as distributed systems and programming is known as distributed computing. If required, RMI can be connected to Internet to communicate with Web servers.

6. What a distributed application should satisfy?

A distributed application needs the following to do.

1. The client should be able to locate the remote objects existing on remote server. For example, RMI uses a naming service given by Naming class to bind remote objects with the rmi registry.
2. The client should be able to communicate with the remote objects. This is taken care by RMI runtime environment. RMI programming feels in such way the remote method invocation is as if invoking on a local system. Small difference comes in Server side program where binding is performed by the remote object with the RMI runtime mechanism through RMI registry.
3. To load methods for objects used in invocation. RMI passes objects between client and server and loads methods as per need.

7. As it given an example of bank transaction, does RMI take care of transaction management also?

No, RMI job is communication only – sending parameters to the remote method and getting back the return value of the remote method to the client. To take care of transactions, takes the help of EJB (Enterprise Java Beans). The backbone of EJB is RMI. EJB uses RMI for communication and adds extra features like transaction management, security, atomicity, load balancing and logging etc.

8. What protocol RMI uses?

First of all you know it is not a Web based technology. So, RMI does not use browsers and HTTP protocol. It comes with its own protocol known as RMI protocol with a default port number 1099 (which you can configure of your own). The protocol involves RMI runtime environment, Remote references for remote objects, RMI registry and some naming service etc.

9. What is object communication?

In RMI, objects communicate; an object on client side communicates with another object on server side. This is known as object-to-object communication. Through distributed network, objects pass in between client and server (having reference to each other). For this purpose, RMI internally serialize objects. This is good example where Java uses objects most extensively in programming.

10. What is remote object?

An object created on the server (by the server program) is known as remote object. To put technically, any object that implements java.rmi.Remote interface is known as remote object. This we is shown how to create in RMI Application Step by Step Programs Explanation (in 3rd Program – server program).

11. What are the features of RMI?

1. It is object-oriented and communication is between Java-to-Java objects distributed.
2. It is multithreaded.
3. All the features of Java are applicable to RMI.
4. The extended Java features are: a) Distributed connectivity b) Connecting legacy systems. Legacy means that we do not know in advance what type of server it is going to be connected in the network.
5. RMI is seamless integration. Seamless implies communication through an object and information about operating system where the object developed is not known to the programmer when he writes the code.
6. RMI has different type of garbage collection known as Distributed garbage collection.

12. What is distributed garbage collection?

Everyone knows what is garbage collection in Java – removing objects that do not have any reference (not used) in the remaining part of the Java program being executed. All this happens on a single system. But distributed garbage collection is very different as it occurs between two systems. In RMI, the server exports a object to the client by storing a reference with it. When the client communication is over or disconnects with the server, the reference of client is lost on the server remote object. If the reference of the client no more exists, the remote object on the server is eligible for garbage collection. This is known as distributed garbage collection. Remote objecct and the reference are explained in RMI Application Step by Step Programs Explanation (in 4th Program – client program).

13. What is the architecture of RMI?

RMI as a technology comes with an architecture, implementation with distribution of client and server side programs and execution etc. Architecture is given in Java RMI Architecture with diagram.

14. How many layers exists in RMI Architecture?

Basically there are three layers – Application layer, Proxy layer and Remote reference layer. These are discussed in RMI architecture clearly.

15. What an RMI application comprises of?

The basic programs needed for an RMI application are a remote interface, stub and registry etc. All these are discussed in
RMI Application Step by Step Programs Explanation and execution.

16. What is the process of compilation, execution and distribution (on client and server) of the programs involved in RMI application?

Compilation and execution are clearly given step-by-step in RMI Stepwise Compilation Execution Distribution.

Learn RMI Architecture before going into an example of writing a RMI application.

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