MathLink allows you to call an external program from within
Mathematica even when that program is running on a remote computer. Typically, you need to start the program directly from the operating system on the remote computer. But then you can connect to it using commands within your
Mathematica session.
External programs that are created using
mcc or
mprep always contain the code that is needed to set up
MathLink connections. If you start such programs directly from your operating system, they will prompt you to specify what kind of connection you want. Alternatively, if your operating system supports it, you can also give this information as a command-line argument to the external program.
