POLY - Declarative Programming with Concurrency and Mobility
Jan 2001 - Dec 2002
An ongoing research issue concerns the integration of declarative specification styles into programming languages. Declarative programming has been most successful in modelling transformational processes, as witnessed by "pure" logic and functional programming. Nevertheless, any comprehensive programming model must address not only transformational, but also reactive aspects of systems, like interaction, concurrency and mobility.
This project focuses on the design and implementation of a concrete programming language based on the LPI model. The main motivation for LPI is not just to define an expressive specification formalism, but also to develop a real programming and coordination language. Such an effort is a requirement for a practical evaluation and dissemination of the LPI model. A reasonably efficient implementation is a goal to attain: one has reasons to believe that the structured nature of LPI computations will be a major simplification factor, when compared with languages that require global propagation of constraints. Moreover, since abuse of idioms tends to weaken the readability of programs, some effort must also be placed in the conception of appropriate high-level programming language constructs, fundamentally in what concerns multi-paradigm programming. It is expected that the development and analysis of LPI programs will support the forthcoming design issues.
This project focuses on the design and implementation of a concrete programming language based on the LPI model. The main motivation for LPI is not just to define an expressive specification formalism, but also to develop a real programming and coordination language. Such an effort is a requirement for a practical evaluation and dissemination of the LPI model. A reasonably efficient implementation is a goal to attain: one has reasons to believe that the structured nature of LPI computations will be a major simplification factor, when compared with languages that require global propagation of constraints. Moreover, since abuse of idioms tends to weaken the readability of programs, some effort must also be placed in the conception of appropriate high-level programming language constructs, fundamentally in what concerns multi-paradigm programming. It is expected that the development and analysis of LPI programs will support the forthcoming design issues.
