Using Logical Operators as an Extended Coordination Mechanism in Linda

Abstract

In the last 20 years of research in coordination, researchers were able to demonstrate that distributed languages are made of two distinct parts: a computation and a coordination language. Among a plethora of coordination models (the basis of a coordination language) available today, Linda is perhaps the most successful. Linda advocates that processes should interact solely via associative shared memories called tuple spaces. Linda has developed from a single-tuple-space into a multiple-tuple-space model but the coordination mechanism used was never extended to express the multiple-tuple-space model full potential. This paper describes an extension of the Linda model, called LogOp, where primitives can use logical operators to combine tuple spaces on-the-fly. It is argued that LogOp provides a simpler and more elegant coordination mechanism than Linda. An implementation of LogOp is also described and initial results indicate that LogOp implementations are efficient when dealing with multiple tuple spaces.