thesis

Functional programming languages in computing clouds: practical and theoretical explorations

Abstract

Cloud platforms must integrate three pillars: messaging, coordination of workers and data. This research investigates whether functional programming languages have any special merit when it comes to the implementation of cloud computing platforms. This thesis presents the lightweight message queue CMQ and the DSL CWMWL for the coordination of workers that we use as artefact to proof or disproof the special merit of functional programming languages in computing clouds. We have detailed the design and implementation with the broad aim to match the notions and the requirements of computing clouds. Our approach to evaluate these aims is based on evaluation criteria that are based on a series of comprehensive rationales and specifics that allow the FPL Haskell to be thoroughly analysed. We find that Haskell is excellent for use cases that do not require the distribution of the application across the boundaries of (physical or virtual) systems, but not appropriate as a whole for the development of distributed cloud based workloads that require communication with the far side and coordination of decoupled workloads. However, Haskell may be able to qualify as a suitable vehicle in the future with future developments of formal mechanisms that embrace non-determinism in the underlying distributed environments leading to applications that are anti-fragile rather than applications that insist on strict determinism that can only be guaranteed on the local system or via slow blocking communication mechanisms

    Similar works