An Equational Logic and a Coordination Language for Distributed Objects

Ziaei, Mahmood Reza

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/11044 Copy

Description

Title

An Equational Logic and a Coordination Language for Distributed Objects

Author(s)

Ziaei, Mahmood Reza

Issue Date

2004-12

Keyword(s)

distributed systems

Abstract

Building reliable distributed object-based systems is challenging. The work presented in this dissertation takes up on two approaches to address some of these challenges. The first part of the dissertation presents a equational theory of may testing equivalence for asynchronous calculi with locality and no name matching. Name matching, which is similar to pointer comparison in imperative languages, is considered a harmful feature that prevents useful program transformations. A trace-based characterization of may testing is provided for a version of asynchronous \picl\ with locality and no name matching (called \lpi). Trace based characterizations simplify reasoning about equivalence of pairs of processes. Using the characterization, a complete axiomatization for the finitary fragment of the calculi is presented. The first part of the dissertation extends the may testing results to the Actor model of distributed object-based computation. The Actor model has been an inspiring model of distributed object-based computation for two decades. This part of the dissertation gives an overview of the Actor model and presents \api\, a formalization of the Actor model as a typed asynchronous \picl\ . The type system imposes a certain discipline on the use of names to capture actor properties such as uniqueness and persistence. The notion of {\it may} testing in \api\ and a trace based characterization of \api\ are then investigated. This characterization is compared with that of asynchronous \picl\, and the differences that arise due to actor properties are highlighted. Even though the Actor model provides a strong foundation for distributed object based computation, its limited coordination capabilities make specification of coordination logics very difficult. To make up for this limitation, the last part of this dissertation presents SynchNet, a compositional meta-level language for coordination of distributed objects. Its design is based on the principle of separation of concerns, namely separation of the coordination from computational aspects. SynchNet can be used in combination with any object-based language capable of expressing sequential behavior of objects.

Type of Resource

text

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/11044

Copyright and License Information

You are granted permission for the non-commercial reproduction, distribution, display, and performance of this technical report in any format, BUT this permission is only for a period of 45 (forty-five) days from the most recent time that you verified that this technical report is still available from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Computer Science Department under terms that include this permission. All other rights are reserved by the author(s).

Owning Collections