Responsibilities: Support for Contract Based Distributed Programming

Henry Detmold
Department of Computer Science, The University of Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia.
henry@cs.adelaide.edu.au

Michael J. Oudshoorn
Department of Computer Science, The University of Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia.
michael@cs.adelaide.edu.au

Abstract

This paper describes responsibilities, a new message-passing communication construct for distributed systems. The paper introduces a set of objective criteria for analysing these constructs, applies it to assess current technology and employs it in the design of the new construct. Responsibilities generalize asynchronous communication primitives such as futures or promises, and are especially useful in specification and implementation of extended message-passing interactions. Detailed examples of such interaction are explored using the construct and responsibilities are assessed using the objective criteria.

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