RPC & COM foundations
Procedure-style communication between components, locally or across the network.
Official Microsoft docs
Closest official references related to this topic on Microsoft Learn.
Why it matters
A large portion of Windows management, service coordination, and distributed features depend on RPC-style contracts.
Mental model
RPC lets a client pretend it is calling a function, while under the hood the call is marshaled, transported, checked, and executed elsewhere.
How it works
- 1Interfaces are defined and exposed by a server component.
- 2Client stubs and server stubs marshal parameters into a transport-safe format.
- 3The RPC runtime chooses a protocol sequence such as ncalrpc, named pipes, or TCP depending on the scenario.
Key terms
- Stub
- Generated code that marshals and unmarshals parameters for RPC.
- Protocol sequence
- The RPC transport selection, such as ncalrpc or ncacn_np.
A management tool talking to a service
The user sees a button click, but the real work may be an RPC call into a service that owns the privileged operation.
Common misconception
RPC is not automatically 'remote only'. A lot of Windows RPC traffic is local and never leaves the machine.
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