Lets suppose I have a dedicated server, perhaps a virtual private server, hosted on the world wide web.
If I opened up the firewall for the RMI port and wrote a Swing app which communicated using RMI.
a) I assume that would work as long as I got the right ports and the client did not have a blocking firewall (otherwise they figure out the right ports like 1099).
b) Is is easier and possible to run RMI over HTTPS instead?
a) Yes
b) Don't know what you mean by "run RMI over HTTPS". If mean is RMI easier than HTTPS, then yes because don't have to deal with SSL certificates. However, there are greater security risks when using RMI over the web.