One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates making an inter-process procedure call through a shared memory that is shared between a client process and a server process, wherein the client makes the inter-process procedure call as if the client is making a local procedure call, but the procedure call actually executes on the server. The system operates by an Application Programming Interface (API) to allow the client to make an inter-process procedure call. The system then allocates a section of the shared memory for the data structure parameters of the inter-process procedure call.