Chapter 19. Marshaling and Remoting

The days of integrated programs all running in a single process on a single machine are, if not dead, at least seriously wounded. Today's programs consist of complex components running in multiple processes, often across the network. The Web has facilitated distributed applications in a way that was unthinkable even a few years ago, and the trend is toward distribution of responsibility.

A second trend is toward centralizing business logic on large servers. Although these trends appear to be contradictory, in fact they are synergistic: business objects are being centralized while the user interface and even some middleware are being distributed.

The net effect is that objects need to be able to talk with one another at a distance. Objects running on a server handling the web user interface need to be able to interact with business objects living on centralized servers at corporate headquarters.

The process of moving an object across a boundary is called marshal by value. Boundaries exist at various levels of abstraction in your program. The most obvious boundary is between objects running on different machines.

The process of preparing an object to be remoted is called marshaling. On a single machine, objects might need to be marshaled across context, app domain, or process boundaries.

A process is essentially a running application. If an object in your word processor wants to interact with an object in your spreadsheet, they must communicate across process boundaries.

Processes are divided into application domains (often called app domains); these in turn are divided into various contexts. App domains act like lightweight processes, and contexts create boundaries that objects with similar rules can be contained within. At times, objects will be marshaled across both context and app domain boundaries, as well as across process and machine boundaries.

When an object is marshaled by value, it appears to be sent through the wire from one computer to another, much like Captain Kirk being teleported down to the surface of a planet some miles below the orbiting USS Enterprise.

In Star Trek, Kirk was actually sent to the planet, but in the .NET edition, it is all an illusion. If you are standing on the surface of the planet, you might think you are seeing and talking with the real Kirk, but you aren't talking to Kirk at all: you are talking to a proxy, perhaps a hologram, whose job is to take your message up to the Enterprise where it is relayed to the real Kirk.

Between you and Kirk there are also a number of "sinks." A sink is an object whose job is to enforce policy. For example, if Kirk tries to tell you something that might influence the development of your civilization, the prime-directive sink might disallow the transmission.

When the real Kirk responds, he passes his response through various sinks until it gets to the proxy and the proxy tells you. It seems to you as though Kirk is really there, but he's actually sneaking up behind you to thwart your nefarious plans. Alas, it turns out that it was Mr. Sulu who was controlling the hologram the whole time. Better luck next episode.

The actual transmission of your message is done by a channel. The channel's job is to know how to move the message from the Enterprise to the planet. The channel works with a formatter. The formatter makes sure the message is in the right format. Perhaps you speak only Vulcan, and the poor Captain doesn't. The formatter can translate your message into Federation Standard, and translate Kirk's response from Federation Standard back to Vulcan. You appear to be talking with one another, but the formatter (known as the universal translator in the Star Trek universe) is silently facilitating the communication.

This chapter demonstrates how your objects can be marshaled across various boundaries, and how proxies and stubs can create the illusion that your object has been squeezed through the network cable to a machine across the office or around the world. In addition, this chapter explains the role of formatters, channels, and sinks, and how to apply these concepts to your programming.