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Implementing Metcast in Scheme

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Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation

Abstract

This paper describes the experience of implementing a core component of an operationally deployed large distributed system in Scheme. Metcast is a request-reply and subscription system for the dissemination of real-time weather information. The system stores vast amounts of weather observation reports, forecasts, gridded data produced by weather models, and satellite imagery. A Metcast server delivers a subset of these data in response to a query formulated in a domain-specific declarative language. Decoders of World Meteorological Organization's data feed, the Metcast application server, XML encoders and decoders, auxiliary and monitoring CGI scripts are all written in a mostly pure functional subset of Scheme. This paper describes three examples that demonstrate the benefits of our choice of the implementation language: parsing of the data feed; XML transformations and Web services; a modular interpreter for the extensible and expressive request language. We also discuss general-purpose extensions to Scheme developed in the project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center, Monterey, CA, 93943

    Oleg Kiselyov

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  1. Oleg Kiselyov
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Correspondence to Oleg Kiselyov.

Additional information

This is an extended version of a paper presented at the Workshop on Scheme and Functional Programming 2000, sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN. September 17, 2000. Montreal, Canada.

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Kiselyov, O. Implementing Metcast in Scheme. Higher-Order Symb Comput 18, 355–370 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10990-005-4880-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10990-005-4880-9

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