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From: pauld@tcom.stc.co.uk (Paul Davies)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: ISO RPC DP
Message-ID: <438@davaar.tcom.stc.co.uk>
Date: 2 Feb 89 19:47:16 GMT
References: <733@pyuxe.UUCP> <5560012@hpindda.HP.COM> <3606@geaclib.UUCP>
Reply-To: pauld@tcom.stc.co.uk (Paul Davies)
Organization: STC Telecoms, London N11 1HB.
Lines: 60

In article <3606@geaclib.UUCP> joey@geaclib.UUCP (Joey De Wiele) writes:
>
>Someone at ISO is doing work on a specific Remote Procedure Call
>standard. This standard is NOT the ROSE standards referenced by Mr. HO.
>
>I believe the work is being driven by ECMA, but I am not sure. I know
>nothing of the standards beyond vague comments I heard at the SC 21
>plenaryin Sydney. It sounds like RPC is similar in concept to ROSE, but
>I can't say for sure.
>
>ISO wouldn't be ISO unless work was replicated in different groups.
>
>Joey

ECMA are (were ?) doing work specifically on RPC using OSI Remote Operations.

There is a separate spec to the X.219/229 (X.410 ?), it is titled :
 
		'STANDARD ECMA-127,
		     RPC

	    BASIC REMOTE PROCEDURE CALL 
	    USING OSI REMOTE OPERATIONS'

The spec I have is dated December 1987,I don't know what its status is within
ISO but was told it would make DIS shortly and expected to make full IS
within a year. But I've no idea how reliable that info is,for all I know it may already be DIS.

You can receive a free copy of ECMA-127 by writing to :

European Computer Manufacturers Association
114 Ru du Rhone - 1204 Geneva,Switzerland.

If ISO have taken it on board,their version may be more up to date than
the ECMA spec.

I believe the ECMA RPC to be a proper subset of the Remote Operations (ISO
9072/1 and ISO 9072/2). It seems that the ECMA RPC has taken account of
restrictions placed on application programmers by a lot of programming
languages and so much of the 'baggage/richness' provided by the full Remote
Operations is not included. For example, ECMA RPC is generally
restricted to Remote Operations Operation Class 1,which I think means it
only supports synchronous working (invoke and wait on result).

To me it is easier reading than the ROS specs, there is even an RPC
tutorial and guide for application protocol designers.

Some extracts from the spec :

'The subject of this ECMA Standard is Remote Procedure Call (RPC) for open
distributed processing, using the ISO 9072/1 and ISO 9072/2 Remote
Operations notation, services and protocols. These OSI standards are used
without change'.

'This ECMA Standard includes........that subset of Remote Operations which
is consistent with programming language procedure call semantics'.

Hope this helps

	Paul