RPC
Remote Procedure Call
A mechanism that lets you call and run a program on another computer directly from your own, as if it were local.
In Simple Terms
RPC is a mechanism that lets you call and run a program on another server as if it were right there on your own computer. It's used in systems where networked computers work together to get a single job done. For example, a smartphone app might use RPC to ask a distant server to crunch some data or carry out a task.
Behind the Name
RPC stands for "Remote," "Procedure," and "Call." The name literally describes what it does: calling a procedure (a piece of program logic) that lives on a remote machine, as directly as if it were sitting right next to you.
Take a Closer Look!
RPC is a technology for calling and running a program on another computer over a network.
Normally, asking a remote computer to do work involves a lot of complex back-and-forth communication, but RPC lets you skip worrying about all that.
Put simply, when a developer wants to run a program on a distant machine, RPC lets them send the instruction as if they were calling a program on their own computer.
Think of it like picking up an internal phone to ask an assistant in the next room to handle a task for you.
Online services often split their functionality into small programs, each running on a separate server.
In setups like this, where multiple distributed servers need to work together, RPC is commonly used as the way servers pass information to each other.
Using this technology, developers don't have to build the detailed steps of network communication from scratch every time.
As a result, complex systems where separate computers divide up the work can be built much more smoothly.