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Blackboard relations in the μLog coordination model

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Abstract

This paper describescoordination relations, that are relations that induce the presence or absence of data on some dataspaces from the presence or absence of other data on other dataspaces.

To that end we build upon previous work on the μLog model and show that the coordination relations can be easily incorporated in it. This is achieved, on the one hand, by means of novel auxiliary operations, not classically used in Linda-like languages, and, on the other hand, by a translation technique reducing the extended μLog model to the core model augmented with the auxiliary operations. Among the most significant ones are multiple read and get operations on a blackboard, readall and getall operations, and tests for the absence of data on blackboards.

Although simple, the form of coordination relations we propose is quite powerful as evidenced by a few examples including relations coming from the object-oriented paradigm such as inheritance relations.

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Correspondence to Jean-Marie Jacquet.

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Jean-Marie Jacquet, Ph.D.: He is Professor at the Institute of Informatics at the University of Namur, Belgium, and, at an honorary title, Research Associate of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research. He obtained a Master in Mathematics from the University of Liège in 1982, a Master in Computer Science from the University of Namur in 1984 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Namur in 1989. His research interest are in Programming Languages and Coordination models. He has served as a reviewer and program committee member of several conferences.

Koen de Bosschere, Ph.D.: He holds the degree of master of Science in Engineering of the Ghent University, and a Ph.D. from the same University. He is currently research associate with the Fund for Scientific Research — Flanders and senior lecturer at the Ghent University, where he teaches courses on computer architecture, operating systems and declarative programming languages. His research interests are coordination in parallel logic programming, computer architecture and systems software.

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Jacquet, JM., De Bosschere, K. Blackboard relations in the μLog coordination model. New Gener Comput 19, 23–55 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03037533

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03037533

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