Title :
Using scoping rules as a distributed coordination language
Author_Institution :
Walt Disney Imagineering, Glendale, CA, USA
Abstract :
Essential to coordinating a distributed application is organizing and traversing the distributed application graph. Lexical scoping performs this function among modern high-level programming languages, but does not have the same distinction in distributed programming systems, where it competes with various forms of associative and object-oriented binding. We show that distributed lexical scoping, combined with closures, provides a powerful means of coordinating communication in distributed computations and can significantly reduce the complexity for developing certain types of applications vis-a-vis other coordination paradigms/languages. These results are not dependent on a particular programming language, and can be combined with existing paradigms
Keywords :
directed graphs; distributed processing; object-oriented programming; parallel languages; parallel programming; programming theory; Scheme; associative binding; closures; complexity; directed graph; distributed application graph; distributed coordination language; distributed programming systems; high-level programming languages; lexical scoping; object-oriented binding; scoping rules; Associative memory; Computer languages; Computer networks; Crystallization; Distributed computing; Functional programming; Modems; Object oriented programming; Organizing; Sockets;
Conference_Titel :
System Sciences, 1997, Proceedings of the Thirtieth Hawaii International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Wailea, HI
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-7743-0
DOI :
10.1109/HICSS.1997.667281