Introduction to Distributed Objects

Explains how Objective-C objects in different threads or different processes communicate.

Limitations

Cocoa’s distributed objects system is available only to Objective-C applications.

Organization of This Document

The Objective-C language support for distributed objects is described in detail in the “Remote Messaging” section of The Runtime System in The Objective-C Programming Language . You should be familiar with it before reading this topic. This topic extends that discussion by describing the Cocoa classes used to implement distributed objects.

The classes are divided into the following categories:

Distributed Objects Architecture

Connections and Proxies

Ports and Name Servers

Message Encapsulation

More detailed discussion and examples of how to use distributed objects are covered in the following tasks:

Vending an Object

Getting a Vended Object

Configuring a Connection

Handling Connection Errors

Authenticating Connections

Making Substitutions During Message Encoding

Using NSInvocation