Performance studies of remote method invocation in Java

Abstract

In 1999 Sun Microsystems and IBM introduced a new version of Java's remote method invocation (RMI), called remote method invocation over Internet inter-object request broker (ORB) protocol (RMI over HOP), with the release of JDK1.3. The new RMI API uses a different transport protocol than the original RMI, that is compliant to Common Object Request Broker Architecture's (CORBA) Internet Inter-ORB (IIOP) specification. The original RMI uses the Java remote method protocol (JRMP) as the transport protocol. This paper illustrates that HOP is less efficient in the transmission of data than JRMP in spite of the fact that it uses less TCP packets. The goal is to allow developers to decide when to use JRMP versus RMI over HOP when Java to Java object communications are involved and performance cost is of issue.