remote procedures

The remote procedure mechanism consists of four interdependent language constructs:

1. The exporting of a procedure . A procedure which is made visible by other processes is marked with the keyword exported preceding the procedure heading, e.g. "exported procedure Validate ..." from a process within the CentralUnit. The exporting process can control in which states it will accept the remote request. It may also specify to save the request to other states. The controlling of the acceptance is done by using input and save symbols with the remote procedure name preceded by the keyword procedure.
2. The importing of a procedure . When a process, service or procedure wants to import a remote procedure, it must specify the signature of this procedure in an "imported procedure specification" in a text area. The specification in our case would read: "imported procedure Validate; returns integer;" where the integer returned would give the result of the validation.
3. The specification of remote procedure . In SDL all names must be defined in a specific scope. Thus, the names of remote procedures must be defined in the context in which the actual definition of the procedure and the calls will be contained. In our case the definition of the procedure Validate is within the CentralUnit and the call is in Controller of the AccessPoint. The scope unit enclosing all these is the system itself. There we will find a text area with the following text: "remote procedure Validate; returns integer;".
4. The calling of a remote procedure . The calling of the remote procedure is indistinguishable from local procedure calls unless the caller explicitly states which process it will request the procedure executed by. This can be done by a to-clause with a PId following the procedure name of the call.

Remote procedures may be value returning (as in our example above) and they may be virtual. Z.100