Win32 System Services: The Heart of Windows® 98 and Windows® 2000

9.5. Understanding RPCs at a High Level

Microsoft's RPC mechanism was originally designed by the Open Software Foundation (OSF) as an open standard for RPC functionality on heterogeneous networks. It is the standard for UNIX DCE (Distributed Computing Environment) RPC implementation, and is already in widespread use on the UNIX side because of that. OSF had several goals for its design:

1. Allow machines with different architectures to communicate without the problems that normally arise from differing word sizes, byte sexes, and so on.

2. Allow the use of most normal C types without difficulty. These types include integer and real types, strings, arrays, pointers, structures, and unions.

3. Support multiple network protocols.

4. Hide the underlying network ...