Method and apparatus for managing dependencies in a distributed computing environment for ensuring the safety of remote procedure calls

A method and apparatus for managing dependencies in a distributed environment to ensure the safety of remote procedure calls is disclosed. Each remote procedure call between a calling procedure and a target procedure includes an expected time stamp and expected signature associated with the target procedure. The expected time stamp contains the creation time of the target procedure at the time the calling procedure was last compiled. The expected signature contains data type information of the target procedure formal parameters at the time the calling procedure was last compiled.The target procedure compares the expected time stamp to an actual time stamp maintained by the target procedure. If the two time stamps do not match, the target procedure compares the expected signature and an actual signature maintained by the target procedure to determine whether the data types of the formal parameters sent by the calling procedure are compatible with the data types expected by the target procedure. If the data types are compatible, then execution of the target procedure continues.