How to implement the Observer pattern with Java RMI?

Aaron Digulla picture Aaron Digulla · Jul 27, 2009 · Viewed 8.5k times · Source

I have a client that starts a long running process on the server. At regular intervals, I'd like to show the user what's happening in the background. The most simple approach is to poll the server but I'm wondering if there wasn't a way to implement the Observer pattern for this. Unfortunately, I'm using RMI to talk to the server and I fear that I have to turn my client into an RMI server for this.

Is there another way that I'm missing?