Run-Time Systems for Coordination

This chapter presents an overview of the past, current and possible future run-time systems for coordination. The main coordination language considered in the chapter is Linda. This is because Linda has clearly been the most successful coordination language that has made the transition from academic curiosity to wide-spread commercial use.

The review focuses on the last fifteen years of implementations, from the early closed compile-time analysis versions for parallel computing, which are now mature, through LAN based systems that provided support for parallel and distributed applications. Finally, the review ends with a summary of the work on large-scale implementations supporting coordination over the Internet, in particular PageSpace and WCL. Throughout the review many of the issues that have concerned implementors are raised and discusssed.

The chapter concludes by drawing on the authors experience of developing run-time systems by attempting to envisage where run-times might go next, briefly describing a “tuple mega-server”.