Interprocess comunication

Introduction
o A set of methods for the exchange of data among multiple
processes or computers
o Divided into different methods based on the bandwidth and
latency of communication between the processes, and the type
of data being communicated
o Message Passing Communication
A specification allowing computers communicate with
each other
Two message passing primitives
Send(destination,message)
Receive(source,message)
Two types: pipe and socket`
Pipe
o Unidirectional communication
o One process writes data into tail end of pipe
while another process reads from head end
of the pipe.
Socket
o A communication end point of a
communication link managed by the
transport services
o The goal of secure socket layer:
Privacy by using symmetric
cryptographic data encryption
Integrity by using message integrity
check
Authenticity by using asymmetric
public key cryptography
o Request/Reply Communication
Technique for one application to request the services of
another
Remote Procedure Calls
Most widely used model
Communication transparency
A central component in most distributed system
Operations involving remote procedure call
Parameter Passing and Data Conversion
Binding
Compilation
Exception and Failure Handling
Security
o Transaction Communication
The basic unit of client-server process interaction in a
database system
Every transaction is ACID compliant in accordance with
concurrency control and transparency in the DS
ACID
Atomicity
 o ALL or NO operations in a transaction are
performed
Consistency
o Consistent state is maintained before a
transaction starts and after it concludes
Isolation
o Concurrent transactions DO NOT interfere
with each other
Durability
o transactions results are locked/ permanent
after being committed
Two Phase Commit Protocol
A distributed algorithm that coordinates all the
processes that participate in a distributed atomic
transaction on whether to commit or abort the
transaction
Assures that ACID properties are achieved
X/OPEN XA
o describes the interface between the global
transaction manager and the local resource
manager
o Two Phase Commit is used
Marshalling and External Data Representation
Messages consist of sequences of bytes.
Interoperability Problems
Big-endian, little-endian byte ordering
Floating point representation
Character encodings (ASCII, UTF-8, Unicode, EBCDIC)
So, we must either:
Have both sides agree on an external representation or
transmit in the senders format along with an indication
of the format used. The receiver converts to its form.
External data representation an agreed standard for
the representation of data structures and primitive
values
Marshalling the process of taking a collection of data
items and assembling them into a form suitable for
transmission in a message
Unmarshalling is the process of disassembling them on
arrival into an equivalent representation at the
destination
The marshalling and unmarshalling are intended to be carried
out by the middleware layer