Abstracting Interaction Patterns: A Programming Paradigm for Open Distributed Systems

This paper discusses mechanisms addressing the complexity of building and maintaining Open Distributed Systems. It is argued that a new programming paradigm based on modular specification of interaction patterns is required to address the complexity of such systems. Our research is based on developing abstraction mechanisms to simplify the task of developing and maintaining open systems. We define actors as a model of concurrency for open systems. We then review a number of programming abstractions that are useful in modular specification an..

Programming Actor-Based Collective Adaptive Systems

In recent years, we are witnessing a growing interest in large-scale situated systems, such as those falling under the umbrella of pervasive computing, Cyber-Physical Systems, and the Internet of Things. The actor model is a natural choice for designing and implementing such systems, thanks to the ability of actors to address distribution, autonomy of control, and asynchronous communication: namely, it is convenient to view the pervasive cyberspace as an environment densely inhabited by mobile situated actors. But how can an actor-centric development approach be fruitfully used to engineer a complex coordination strategy, where a myriad of devices/actors performs adaptive distributed sensing/processing/acting? Aggregate computing has been proposed as an emerging paradigm that faces this general problem by adopting a global, system-level stance, allowing to specify and functionally compose collective behaviours by operating on diffused data structures, known as “computational fields”. In this paper, we develop on the idea of integrating the actor model and aggregate computing, presenting a software framework where declarative global-level system specifications are automatically turned into an underlying system of Scala/Akka actors carrying complex coordination tasks involving large sets of devices spread over the pervasive computing system