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