Other Features

Classes providing client side implementation of the transported interface(s) can be either on the client side or the server side (and duly transported) at the time of lookup. On the server side, the proxy classes can be generated in advance (Ant Task) or at runtime - javac is invoked.

To suit remote facilities that are happy with refection and do not need to cast to an interface to use a bean (I am thinking of BeanShell) the proxy class can be generated without specifying that it implements the interface(s).

The Server supports suspend() and resume(). With the current implementation this replies in a timely fashion to the client that the client should try later. The client waits for the notified amount of time and seamlessly tries the request again. A server could cycle through suspended and back to resumed will not affect the client except for the a delay.

AltRMI tries to recover its transports should they fail. The recovery is pluggable in that the developer can choose when/how/if the connection handler tries to recover the connection. Any inprogress, but disconnected method invocation will attempt to be recoved and just return as normal, albeit after a longer than normal delay.

For suspensions, abnormal ends of connection etc, there is a listener that can be set that will allow actions to be taken. Abnormally terminated connections will by default try to be reconnected, the listener can decide if, how many, and how often the retries occur.

On the client side, there is an API for a pluggable pinger. While the server may support timeouts for client connections, the client could choose to overcome that default policy with a ping concept.

The server is able to unpublish a service. In conjuction with suspend()/resume() a service can be republished, upgraded etc whilst in use, or just offlined.

The server implements and acts upon start() and stop() methods.

AltRMI started life as 'pass by value' only. In now supports return types and parameters wrapped in another AltRMI Facade.

For Facades, if you call Person p = getPerson("Fred") twice you will get the same instance on the client side if it is the same instance on the server side.

In some configurations, the client side can have multiple servers it will forward calls to (TODO).