What is gRPC? Why should you use gRPC?

Effective communication lies at the core of modern software development. Speed, scalability, and reliability are critical in networked systems, so you'll need robust solutions to manage communication between components.

gRPC is a promising advanced framework that is revolutionizing inter-application communication. Traditional communication protocols often have difficulty meeting the needs of modern architectures. That's when gRPC stepped in with a powerful and effective solution.

What is gRPC?

What is gRPC? Why should you use gRPC? Picture 1

gRPC (Google Remote Procedure Call) implements RPC (Remote Procedure Call). RPC allows a program to call a process on another system, as if it were a local function call. RPC allows inter-process communication (IPC) on the network.

Traditional RPC has many constraints including the need for interoperability with multiple languages. Traditional RPC requires serialization of data and can be inefficient in transmission.

Google built gRPC in search of a modern RPC framework that transcends the limitations of traditional RPC implementations. gRPC runs on the HTTP/2 protocol, which has significant performance improvements over its predecessor HTTP/1.

gRPC is an open source, high performance RPC framework. It provides a simple and efficient way to connect services in a distributed system. gRPC allows you to define services and their methods using Protocol Buffers.

You can create client and server code in many programming languages ​​with gRPC. This allows for seamless interoperability across different platforms.

The main purpose of gRPC is to enable efficient and reliable communication between services. gRPCs do this regardless of their language or implementation location.

How gRPC works

What is gRPC? Why should you use gRPC? Picture 2

Protocol Buffers determine the serial

At its core, gRPC is based on the concept of a service defined in the Protocol Buffers language. The service defines methods that the client can call remotely and provides a structure for exchanging data.

Regarding the service definition, gRPC uses a code generator to create client and server stubs in the programming language of your choice. This makes it easy to integrate gRPC into existing code bases.

gRPC relies on client-server communication on a request-response model. When a client calls a remote method, it creates a stub - the local representation of the remote service.

The stub provides a method with the same characteristics as the remote method. The client can call this method as if it were a local function. The stub serializes method parameters into a binary format using Protocol Buffers. The stub also sends method parameters to the server over an HTTP/2 connection.

The gRPC server, on the other hand, listens for incoming requests on a specific port. When a request arrives, the server stub receives the serialized request and deserializes it to its original form. The stub also calls the corresponding method on the server, passing it the deserialized parameters.

The server performs the necessary computation and returns a serialized response, using Protocol Buffers, to the client.

HTTP/2 makes gRPC more efficient

One of the important advantages of gRPC is the use of the HTTP/2 protocol as the underlying transport.

HTTP/2 provides features like Multiplexing, Server Push and header compression. This allows efficient and concurrent communication between the client and the server. Multiplexing allows multiple gRPC requests and responses over a single HTTP/2 connection. This reduces latency and improves throughput.

Server Push allows the server to send data to the client without waiting for the request. This allows for real-time updates and streaming scenarios. Header compression reduces metadata transmission loss. Header compression with each request improves performance.

gRPC protects against failure

gRPC supports message validation, error handling, and Deadline Propagation. These ensure reliability and fault tolerance. When the client sends a request to the server, it waits for confirmation to ensure that the request is received.

If there's a communication problem, gRPC's error reporting mechanism will let you fix it. This allows the client and server to recover or take appropriate action. gRPC also includes a Deadline Propagation function that allows the client to specify a maximum time period for a request. This ensures that requests fulfill within a specific timeframe.

Why should you use gRPC?

gRPC is a new technology that is gaining popularity due to its advanced features and capabilities.

gRPC provides a powerful solution for client-server architectures such as APIs and microservices. gRPC will revolutionize the way you design and build distributed applications. It takes advantage of the speed and efficiency of protocols like HTTP/2 and binary serialization from Protocol Buffers.

gRPC is cross-platform

gRPC provides implementations specific to individual programming languages. These implementations provide idiomatic interfaces and generate code for the target language.

Currently, gRPC supports a variety of languages, including Java, C++, Python, Go, Ruby, and JavaScript. This broad support allows you to work with your favorite programming languages.

gRPC encourages cross-platform development by allowing you to build apps for multiple platforms. It provides tools and libraries for efficient cross-platform communication regardless of platform.

This ensures that your applications can communicate regardless of platform or device. User experience increases the reach of your software

gRPC drives performance and scalability

gRPC boasts outstanding performance and scalability characteristics. It outperforms traditional RPC systems in terms of latency and throughput.

Furthermore, gRPC incorporates built-in support for load balancing and scalability. gRPC allows applications to distribute workloads across multiple service instances. It leverages features like client-side load balancing and distributed monitoring for these.

This inherent scalability ensures that your applications can handle the increased traffic and adapt to changing needs without sacrificing performance or reliability. With gRPC, you can confidently build systems that scale with ease, meeting the needs of your growing user base.

Kareem Winters

Update 24 July 2023