Open Network Computing Remote Procedure Call

Open Network Computing Remote Procedure Call (ONC RPC) is a widely deployed remote procedure call

Remote procedure call

In computer science, a remote procedure call is an inter-process communication that allows a computer program to cause a subroutine or procedure to execute in another address space without the programmer explicitly coding the details for this remote interaction...

system. ONC was originally developed by Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

as part of their Network File System project, and is sometimes referred to as Sun ONC or Sun RPC. ONC is considered "lean and mean", but has limited appeal as a generalized RPC system for WAN

Wide area network

A wide area network is a telecommunication network that covers a broad area . Business and government entities utilize WANs to relay data among employees, clients, buyers, and suppliers from various geographical locations...

s or heterogeneous environments. Systems such as DCE

Distributed Computing Environment

The Distributed Computing Environment is a software system developed in the early 1990s by a consortium that included Apollo Computer , IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, and others. The DCE supplies a framework and toolkit for developing client/server applications...

, CORBA

Çorba

Chorba , ciorbă , shurpa , shorpo , or sorpa is one of various kinds of soup or stew found in national cuisines across Middle East...

and SOAP

SOAP

SOAP, originally defined as Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of Web Services in computer networks...

are generally used in this wider role.

ONC is based on calling convention

Calling convention

In computer science, a calling convention is a scheme for how subroutines receive parameters from their caller and how they return a result; calling conventions can differ in:...

s used in Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

and the C programming language

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

. It serializes

Serialization

In computer science, in the context of data storage and transmission, serialization is the process of converting a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored and "resurrected" later in the same or another computer environment...

data using the XDR

External Data Representation

External Data Representation is a standard data serialization format, for uses such as computer network protocols. It allows data to be transferred between different kinds of computer systems. Converting from the local representation to XDR is called encoding. Converting from XDR to the local...

, which has also found some use to encode and decode data in files that are to be accessed on more than one platform. ONC then delivers the XDR payload using either UDP

User Datagram Protocol

The User Datagram Protocol is one of the core members of the Internet Protocol Suite, the set of network protocols used for the Internet. With UDP, computer applications can send messages, in this case referred to as datagrams, to other hosts on an Internet Protocol network without requiring...

or TCP

Transmission Control Protocol

The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is one of the two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol , and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP...

. Access to RPC services on a machine are provided via a port mapper that listens for queries on a well-known port (number 111) over UDP and TCP.

Implementations of ONC RPC exist in most Unix-like

Unix-like

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

systems. Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

supplies an implementation for Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

in their Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX

Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX

Windows Services for UNIX or Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications is a software package produced by Microsoft which provides a Unix subsystem and other parts of a full Unix environment on Windows NT and some of its immediate successor operating-systems...

product; in addition, a number of third-party implementation of ONC RPC for Windows exist, including versions for C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

/C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

, Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

, and .NET (see external links).

ONC RPC was described in RFC 1831, published in 1995. RFC 5531, published in 2009, is the current version. Authentication mechanisms used by ONC RPC are described in RFC 2695, RFC 2203, and RFC 2623.

In 2009, Sun relicensed the ONC RPC code under the standard 3-clause BSD license and then reconfirmed by Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...

in 2010 following confusion about the scope of the relicensing.

External links

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See also

External links