Concurrent and Distributed Computing in Java

Chapter 6

Distributed Programming

6.1 Introduction

In this chapter, we will learn primitives provided in the Java programming language for building distributed applications. We will see primarily two programming styles: sockets and remote method invocations. Sockets provide a lower-level interface for building distributed programs but are more efficient and flexible. Remote method invocations (RMI) are easier to use.

In this chapter we first describe the class InetAddress, which is useful for network programming no matter which style of primitives are used. Then we discuss primitives for programming using sockets. These sockets may use either the Universal Datagram Protocol (UDP), or the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). We give an example of an echo server using sockets based on the UDP protocol and a simple name server using sockets based on the TCP protocol. Finally, we discuss programming using remote method invocations.

6.2 InetAddress Class

For any kind of distributed application, we need the notion of an Internet address. Any computer connected to the Internet (called a host) can be uniquely identified by an address called an IP address. Since addresses are difficult to remember, each host also has a hostname. It is the task of a domain name system (DNS) server to provide the mapping from a hostname to its address. Java provides a class Java.net. Inetaddress, which can be used for this translation. The relevant methods for the class InetAddress are given below:

public ...