Java RMI

By William Grosso

Book Overview

Java RMI contains a wealth of experience in designing and implementing Java's Remote Method Invocation. If you're a novice reader, you will quickly be brought up to speed on why RMI is such a powerful yet easy to use tool for distributed programming, while experts can gain valuable experience for constructing their own enterprise and distributed systems. With Java RMI, you'll learn tips and tricks for making your RMI code excel. The book also provides strategies for working with serialization, threading, the RMI registry, sockets and socket factories, activation, dynamic class downloading, HTTP tunneling, distributed garbage collection, JNDI, and CORBA. In short, a treasure trove of valuable RMI knowledge packed into one book.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565924525
• ISBN13: 9781565924529
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 572 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 7.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Excellent RMI and distributed computing wisdom

I personally have a very high opinion of the technical leveland presentation of this book. The author gives enough substanceto all RMI components as well as enough how-to information fora typical TMI deployment. What I apperciated most however isthat it's replete with small pieces of wisdom on distributedsystems design (e.g., scalability) that were eye-opening. It also illustrates the distributed way of thinking through teaching to ask the right question at design phase. It's true that it talks about more than strict RMI but that's hardly a shortcoming. The reader wanting to see onl RMI stuff will find his way by picking the right chapters (you can't miss them).Overall, excellent technical depth, good job.

Really nice book for distributed system developer.

The book is well organized from the basic technology to hgh level, deep technology. If someone wants to know RMI itself, thisbook will be useless. But if someone really wants to know what distributed system is and how the distributed system is implemented using RMI, this book is very helpful.

Good Book on Distributed Programming in Java

The majority of recent computer books are cut and paste jobs written byoverly perky hackers with limited communication skills; most appear tohave been hastily assembled over a few weekends from screen and codedumps, with a smattering of text added to provide some semblance ofcontinuity. This book bucks that trend. Ostensibly it is a book aboutRMI. However, it goes much further and provides an excellentintroduction to building distributed applications in Java using RMI asits interface protocol. The books starts with basic distributedprogramming using sockets, continues to develop its ideas using RMI, andthen progresses to more advanced topics, such as serialization,scalability, multithreaded servers, and security policies. A lot ofnicely worked out examples are provided along the way. Highlyrecommended.

a great book for programmers of all levels

Many books on specific technologies fall into one of the following categories: a reference book (merely reformatting the javadocs), a simplistic tutorial (is there already a "RMI for Dummies"?), or a guide strictly for those already knowledgable on the subject. Java RMI is not a mere substitute for the javadoc, instead it manages to teach distributed programming (RMI is merely the platform used) and share the author's experience in this field in a way appropriate for both newcomers and old hands alike.In the manner of a mathematician, Grosso starts from basic principles and builds one level at a time. He assumes the reader is familiar with java programming generally but assumes nothing about network or distributed programming. So, he starts by laying the foundation of streams and sockets. (Obviously, some readers may skim or skip these chapters.) With tons of example code throughout the book, in one early chapter he builds an example of a distributed application using sockets directly instead of RMI. Then, introducing RMI, he reimplements the example using RMI to demonstrate the advantages of this approach. Preferring not to depend on other sources, he also includes an excellent treatment of threading, in which even those experienced writing multi-threaded software will find useful advice, such as some of the patterns to reduce the granularity of locks needed for synchronization (as always, with explicit examples).Throughout the book Grosso considers the example of a bank ATM machine. Going far beyond just teaching the mechanics of using RMI to write distributed software, Grosso emphasizes the questions and tradeoffs that must be addressed to design good distributed software. (Again, this is why i say the book addresses distributed programming in general, while also covering the specifics of RMI.) The ATM example is sufficiently robust to apply all the lessons.Overall, this book is a tremendous success, managing to treat distributed programming and the details of RMI in a book appropriate for programmers of all levels. The often conversational style of the text makes for easy reading, and the wealth of example code makes the lessons very concrete. I highly recommend this book.