Clients (applications) need a way to communicate with servers. The release of the SSM does not contain any communication or RPC facilities for client-server communication. However, the Version 1.1.1 release contains a version of the publicly available Sun RPC package, modified to operate with the SSM's thread package. The Shore value-added server uses this package. The VAS Tutorial contains an example of using the RPC package in the RPC Implementation section and a discussion of its integration with the thread package in the Multi-threading Issues section.
One of the goals of Shore is that clients only need to communicate with a server on their local machine. The SSM in the local server cooperates with other remote SSMs to cache data locally. Our work on this capability is not complete. Eventually, the communication system we built to support this will also be available to VAS writers.