A further thought.  Using the scheme where a lookup precedes every
remote call can the server down between the lookup and the remote call?

I agree that at first it feels like enveloping every remote call in
try/catch is to make the source be littered with redundant code.

How many remote calls are there?  Are the same remote calls repeated in
the source?  Perhaps creating a facade on the client side is the thing
to do?  The try/catch blocks would be inside the facade, perhaps even
with a count of retries.

Maybe even further: some try/catch generalization can happen inside of
the class providing the facade?   I believe it can:

static private Object remoteCall(String remoteObjectToLookup, Method m,

 Object args[], int nMaxTries) {

 if (nMaxTries <= 0)
    throw new IllegalStateException("failed making remote call " + m +

           " to " + remoteObjectToLookup);

 Object result = null;
 boolean succeed = false;
 try {
   Object o = Naming.lookup(remoteObjectToLookup);
   result = m.invoke(o, args);
   succeeded = true;
 } catch ( .... ) {
    ....
 }

 if (succeed)
   return result;
 else
   remoteCall(remoteObjectToLookup,m,args,nMaxTries-1);

}

Such a generalized method would allow each public facade method to
avoid having it's own try/catch blocks.

Cheers,
Opalinski
opalpa@gmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/opalpaweb/