Which function does gRPC primarily serve?

gRPC primarily serves the function of enabling remote procedure calls (RPCs). It is an open-source framework developed by Google that allows applications to communicate with each other over a network. This communication model supports the development of microservices, where different services may be written in different languages or run on different platforms, yet still need to interact seamlessly.

With gRPC, developers can define service methods using Protocol Buffers, a powerful language-agnostic serialization protocol. This definition allows clients to call methods on a remote server as if they were local, handling the details of message transport, serialization, and networking. This abstraction simplifies the development of distributed systems, making gRPC a popular choice for building scalable and high-performance applications.

The other options, while important concepts in software development, do not encompass the primary function of gRPC. Local computations refer to operations performed within the confines of a single machine, database transactions deal with the management of records in a database, and user authentication involves verifying user identities—none of which are the core purpose of gRPC as an RPC framework.