🔹 Difference Between RPC and RPC Framework
| Aspect | RPC (Remote Procedure Call) | RPC Framework |
|------------|--------------------------------|--------------------|
| Definition | A concept that allows calling functions on a remote server as if they were local. | A set of tools, libraries, and protocols that implement RPC functionality. |
| Functionality | Enables communication between client and server in distributed systems. | Provides ready-to-use implementations for handling RPC calls, serialization, security, and networking. |
| Example Concept | A client requests a function (getUserDetails()) on a remote server. | A framework like gRPC, Apache Thrift, or JSON-RPC handles the networking, serialization, and execution of getUserDetails(). |
| Transport Mechanism | Can work over HTTP, TCP, UDP, WebSockets, etc. | Uses specific transport mechanisms like HTTP/2 (gRPC), TCP (Thrift), or HTTP (JSON-RPC). |
| Serialization | Requires a way to encode and decode data (e.g., JSON, XML, Binary). | Built-in serialization formats like ProtoBuf (gRPC), JSON (JSON-RPC), or Binary (Thrift). |
| Security | Must be implemented separately (e.g., authentication, encryption). | Many frameworks provide built-in TLS encryption, authentication, and access control. |
| Cross-Language Support | Requires manual implementation for different languages. | Provides auto-generated client and server code for multiple languages (e.g., Python, Java, Go, C++). |
🔹 Simplified Explanation
- RPC (Concept) → Think of it as the idea of calling a remote function.
- RPC Framework (Implementation) → Think of it as the toolkit that makes it easy to implement RPC.
🔹 Example: How They Work Together
1️⃣ RPC (Concept)
💡 You want a function that fetches user details from a remote server:
getUserDetails(user_id)
📌 Without an RPC framework, you would have to manually:
- Open a network connection.
- Serialize the request.
- Send the request to the server.
- Deserialize the response.
- Handle errors and security.
2️⃣ RPC Framework (Implementation)
✅ With an RPC framework like gRPC, you just define the service once:
service UserService {
rpc GetUserDetails(UserRequest) returns (UserResponse);
}
🎯 The framework handles networking, serialization, retries, and authentication automatically.
🎯 Final Thoughts
| Use Case | Choose This |
|-------------|----------------|
| You need to understand how remote calls work | RPC (Concept) |
| You need to implement remote calls easily | RPC Framework (gRPC, Thrift, JSON-RPC, etc.) |
Would you like a step-by-step tutorial on implementing gRPC or Thrift? 🚀