Design and implementation issues for supporting callback procedures in RPC-based distributed software

Rethinking the design strategies in implementing RPC based distributed systems offers significant promise. An area where additional RPC functionality is desirable is in the support for the procedural parameter or callback procedure. RPC support for callback procedures is desirable both for smooth development of new distributed applications as well as for distributing the execution of existing sequential programs. The paper analyzes the general problem of supporting callback procedures. The analysis flushes out the design requirements for an RPC implementation to support callbacks and explores potential advantages of implementing general support for callback procedures.