rmi vs servlets vs sockets

Question

what is the difference between socket programming, rmi and Servlets. When to use what?

Answer 1

Use sockets to implement a specific TCP/IP protocol, whether an existing standard or your own custom protocol. You have complete control over all aspects of network communication.

Servlets support request/reply semantics in the general sense, but it far more likely you will be using HTTPServlets which support, as expected, the HTTP request/reply semantics. For example, a web-server, or a RESTful HTTP based endpoint.

Use RMI for distributed Java Objects. RMI is itself implemented using Sockets (see above) and implements the Java Wire Protocol.