Distinct ONC RPC / XDR for .NET

• Whenever you wish to write an ONC RPC client in any .NET-language to communicate with existing ONC RPC/XDR servers.
• Whenever you wish to preserve the existing interface of an application written using the XDR specifications.
• Whenever you wish to write C# code that can read and write XDR streams. Other (for example C, C++ ) applications often use this platform independent encoding format for serializing data.
• Whenever you wish to write simple client/server applications in .NET.

What comes with the RPC for .NET ?

• The Distinct ONC RPC/XDR for .NET assembly that contains the ONC RPC/XDR run time libraries that conform to RFC 1831 (RPC: Remote Procedure Call Protocol Specification Version 2) and RFC 1832 (XDR: External Data Representation Standard). The API consists of classes that allow you to write .NET clients, for standard RPC servers that can be embedded in applets and be run by a standard Web browser. It also allows you to develop ONC RPC stand-alone servers. The package allows connections over TCP and UDP.
• An RPCBIND application that implements the RPCBIND protocol versions 2 (portmapper), 3 and 4.
• The Rpcgen.NET compiler that translates standard RPC/XDR interface definition files into C# classes that implement the client-and server side stubs and the XDR conversion routines for the described interface. This means Rpcgen.NET implements a C# language mapping for .x IDL files.
• The RPCInfo utility displays a list of all the services registered with the RPCBIND on a system. This utility can be used to query the RPCBIND on the local host (by specifying "localhost" or no host name at all on the command line) or on a remote host (by specifying the name of the host as a command line argument). Source code for the RPCInfo utility is included for reference.
• A set of demo applications that consist of an XDR file which describes an interface of a very simple server, the server implementation, and demo applications that invokes the server written in both Visual Basic.NET and C#.

Unique Features:

• New Flexible Port Range Feature for servers. It is now possible for the administrator to define a range of ports that a server will register on. This means that if you need to use a Distinct RPC.NET Server through a firewall, you can now restrict the number of ports that need to be opened on your firewall to those specified.
• Support for 32 and 64 bit Windows platforms and both IPv4 and IPv6 in a single toolkit.