What are the steps involved to make work a RMI program?

To make a Remote Method Invocation (RMI) program work in Java, you need to follow several key steps to ensure that the distributed application can communicate effectively across different machines or processes. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the steps involved:

1. Define the Remote Interface

The first step in creating an RMI application is to define a remote interface. This interface serves as a contract between the client and the server, specifying the methods that can be called remotely. The remote interface must extend the java.rmi.Remote interface, and each method must throw a java.rmi.RemoteException to handle potential network issues[1][4].

2. Implement the Remote Interface

Once the remote interface is defined, you need to create a class that implements this interface. This implementation class will provide the actual code for the methods declared in the remote interface. It's common to extend java.rmi.server.UnicastRemoteObject in this class, which automatically handles some of the underlying RMI functionality[1][4].

3. Create the Stub and Skeleton Objects (Optional in Java 1.2 and later)

In earlier versions of Java, it was necessary to explicitly generate stub and skeleton objects using the rmic tool. The stub acts as a proxy on the client side, handling network communication, while the skeleton handles incoming method calls on the server side. However, from Java 1.2 onwards, this step is handled automatically by the RMI system, so it's no longer a manual process[1][4][12].

4. Start the RMI Registry

The RMI registry is a simple server-side name service that allows clients to look up remote objects by name. It's typically started on the server side using the rmiregistry command, which listens on a specific port, usually 1099. This registry must be running before the server that hosts the remote objects starts[1][4][18].

5. Create the Server Application

The server application is responsible for creating instances of the remote object implementation, exporting them to the RMI runtime, and binding them to a name in the RMI registry. This allows clients to retrieve the remote objects by name. The server typically sets security policies and may specify a codebase for...