Characterizing traits of coordination

How can one recognize coordination languages and technologies? As this report shows, the common approach that contrasts coordination with computation is intellectually unsound: depending on the selected understanding of the word "computation", it either captures too many or too few programming languages. Instead, we argue for objective criteria that can be used to evaluate how well programming technologies offer coordination services. Of the various criteria commonly used in this community, we are able to isolate three that are strongly characterizing: black-box componentization, which we had identified previously, but also interface extensibility and customizability of run-time optimization goals. These criteria are well matched by Intel's Concurrent Collections and AstraKahn, and also by OpenCL, POSIX and VMWare ESX.Comment: 11 pages, 3 table

Formalizing homogeneous language embeddings

The cost of implementing syntactically distinct Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) can be reduced by homogeneously embedding them in a host language in cooperation with its compiler. Current homogeneous embedding approaches either restrict the embedding of multiple DSLs in order to provide safety guarantees, or allow multiple DSLs to be embedded but force the user to deal with the interoperability burden. In this paper we present the m-calculus which allows parameterisable language embeddings to be specified and analysed. By reducing the problem to its core essentials we are able to show how multiple, expressive language embeddings can be defined in a homogeneous embedding context. We further show how variant calculi with safety guarantees can be defined

A DSL For Logistics Clouds

Cloud is a new area of specialization in the computing world, and, as such, it has not been explicitly addressed by traditional programming languages and environments. Therefore, there is a need to create Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) for it. This paper presents such a DSL that targets logistics clouds, i.e. networked resources and systems of logistics organisations. The DSL is implemented on top of the functional concurrent language Erlang and its distributed data management system Mnesia. The paper presents features of the DSL that implement commonly occurring use cases in the logistics cloud such as message exchange, document sharing and notifications. We show how program features in this DSL map to the underlying Erlang/OTP runtime

Model transformations and Tool Integration

Model transformations are increasingly recognised as being of significant importance to many areas of software development and integration. Recent attention on model transformations has particularly focused on the OMGs Queries/Views/Transformations (QVT) Request for Proposals (RFP). In this paper I motivate the need for dedicated approaches to model transformations, particularly for the data involved in tool integration, outline the challenges involved, and then present a number of technologies and techniques which allow the construction of flexible, powerful and practical model transformations