Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: RCP and LOTOS
Message-ID: <708@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 14 Dec 88 18:36:07 GMT
References: <8812102137.AA20744@com> <1591*carlos@deervax.concordia.ca>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 22

>It is my understanding that there are several variations of RPC, 

Well, there are several different Remote Procedure Call implementations;
I wouldn't necessarily call them "variations", except in the sense that
C, Pascal, FORTRAN 77, etc. are "variations" on the idea of a
"conventional" programming language.

>thus their interfaces (on the applications side and on the transport
>side) should be standardized for the sake of interoperability (this is
>my particular opinion).

Unfortunately, I don't know that this is practical.  The designs of the
different RPC mechanisms may be sufficiently different that, while you
may be able to build an "abstract" interface that sits atop several
different RPC mechanisms and offers access to some - not necessarily all
- of the features of those RPC mechanisms, I don't know that you can go
in and change the interfaces to those mechanisms to all look the same
without doing some violence to their designs.

The same applies to the bits pushed out over the wire.  You'd end up
with something that might interoperated with other modified versions,
but it wouldn't interoperate with the existing implementations....