Many existing Windchill applets and applications use Java RMI to invoke server transactions. There is a continuing shift of focus from this form of communication towards HTTP and XML. But for now, the Windchill development environment continues to support code generation of classes that use RMI to invoke remote service methods.

RMI is a Java-centric remote procedure call (RPC) mechanism implemented on sockets. RMI stub objects perform a remote method invocation between an RMI client and an RMI server. These stub objects contain a host name and port number to which a TCP/IP connection is opened by the client. Windchill exposes only two RMI objects to clients: a server manager object and a method server object. Other RMI objects are used server-to-server to coordinate cached information, but these are not important for client connectivity.

The following sections provide some basic information about the use of RMI. For advanced RMI topics, see Configuring RMI for Tunneling over HTTP.