Java: Sockets or RMI?

Question

I need to separate our application into a light-weight gui application and a business logic application. This won't be a client/server setup as such, as the 'server' component will only have one client.

The other limitation in the application is that it has only one entry/exit point. Therefore if we were to use RMI, it would only ever be on one function. All form data is already wrapped up into a string and passed through one transport area.

Should I just use Java Sockets to enhance this application, or go with RMI? Or some other Java technology?

I made a previous post outlining the requirements of our application, however it went unanswered. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2604528/terminal-panel-pc-single-server-solution-client-server-or-rdp

Cheers.

Answer 1

personally, RMI seems like a bit of overkill if you've just got one method to call, and all your data is already wrapped in a string. i imagine a simple socket server would suffice very well for your needs. however, RMI does give you a bunch of stuff for free, like multithreading, distributed garbage collection, object marshalling, etc etc. however if you only have 1 client then multithreading might not be useful and since you're doing your own object marshalling then these benefits might not gain you anything.

there's a good page on rmi's capabilities here : http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/core/basic/rmi/whitepaper/index.jsp

Answer 2

since your protocol is already very simple (you just pass a string) I suggest that you just go with sockets. the advantage would be that you will not be tied up to Java on both ends, for example - it will be possible to switch the UI to another language easily.