A multi-paradigm programming language for constructing fault-tolerant, distributed systems

The design of FT-SR, a programming language based on SR and oriented toward constructing fault-tolerant distributed systems, is presented. The language, which is based on the existing SR language, is unique in that it has been designed to support equally well any of the programming paradigms that have been developed for this type of system, including the object/action model, the restartable action paradigm, and the state machine approach. To do this, the language is designed to support the implementation of systems modeled as collections of fail-stop atomic objects. Such objects execute operations as atomic actions except when a failure or series of failures cause underlying implementation assumptions to be violated; in this case, notification is provided. An example program consisting of a data manager and its associated stable storage is given