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An Asynchronous Communication Model for Distributed Concurrent Objects

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Abstract

Distributed systems are often modeled by objects that run concurrently, each with its own processor, and communicate by synchronous remote method calls. This may be satisfactory for tightly coupled systems, but in the distributed setting synchronous external calls lead to much waiting; at best resulting in inefficient use of processor capacity, at worst resulting in deadlock. Furthermore, it is difficult to combine active and passive behavior in concurrent objects. This paper proposes an object-oriented solution to these problems by means of asynchronous method calls and conditional processor release points. Although at the cost of additional internal nondeterminism in the objects, this approach seems attractive in asynchronous or unreliable environments. The concepts are integrated in a small object-oriented language with an operational semantics defined in rewriting logic, and illustrated by examples.

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  1. Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Blindern, P.O. Box 1080, 0316, Oslo, Norway

    Einar Broch Johnsen & Olaf Owe

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  1. Einar Broch Johnsen
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  2. Olaf Owe
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Correspondence to Einar Broch Johnsen.

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This paper extends and combines results which have appeared in the proceedings of the 2004 International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods (SEFM) [37] and the 2004 International Workshop on Rewriting Logic and its Applications (WRLA) [41].

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Johnsen, E.B., Owe, O. An Asynchronous Communication Model for Distributed Concurrent Objects. Softw Syst Model 6, 39–58 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-006-0011-2

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