Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days, Second Edition

Remote Method Invocation

Remote method invocation (RMI) creates Java applications that can talk to other Java applications over a network. To be more specific, RMI allows an application to call methods and access variables inside another application, which might be running in a different Java environment or different operating system altogether, and to pass objects back and forth over a network connection. RMI is a more sophisticated mechanism for communicating between distributed Java objects than a simple socket connection is; the mechanisms and protocols by which you communicate between objects are defined and standardized. You can talk to another Java program by using RMI without having to know beforehand what protocol to speak to or how to ...