A Lisp environment for modelling distributed systems
A Lisp environment for modelling distributed systems
QPL (Quasi Parallel Lisp) is a Lisp environment with extensions to support quasi-parallelism, designed for use in the modelling of distributed systems. It supports simulation and prototyping activities, as well as more general distributed working in Lisp. The environment integrates with other Lisp tools in a natural fashion to provide a rich environment for software architecture modelling. A base model for distributed systems is proposed, which provides explicit treatment of time and fairness issues. This model is appropriate for systems of logically distinct processes which communicate by message passing, and the nature of the computation at each process, based on a state transition model, is not tightly constrained. Systems that involve a variety of programming models and notations can therefore be constructed, and the use of declarative languages for network description is investigated. In this respect, QPL constitutes a case study in metalinguistic abstraction, and the techniques used to accomplish this in Lisp are identified. A fully operational implementation of QPL exists, and has been used to conduct a variety of modelling experiments. The QPL programming environment, itself a natural extension of the distributed model, provides effective support for problem solving activities. The kernel of a successor to QPL, which is implemented using on-the-fly conversion to continuation passing style, is also defined. This supports a relational style of network description, and has proven to be an excellent vehicle for exploring and teaching contemporary topics in programming languages. Both versions of QPL provide a rich source of ideas which will form the basis of future work.
University of Southampton
1990
De Roure, David Charles
(1990)
A Lisp environment for modelling distributed systems.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
QPL (Quasi Parallel Lisp) is a Lisp environment with extensions to support quasi-parallelism, designed for use in the modelling of distributed systems. It supports simulation and prototyping activities, as well as more general distributed working in Lisp. The environment integrates with other Lisp tools in a natural fashion to provide a rich environment for software architecture modelling. A base model for distributed systems is proposed, which provides explicit treatment of time and fairness issues. This model is appropriate for systems of logically distinct processes which communicate by message passing, and the nature of the computation at each process, based on a state transition model, is not tightly constrained. Systems that involve a variety of programming models and notations can therefore be constructed, and the use of declarative languages for network description is investigated. In this respect, QPL constitutes a case study in metalinguistic abstraction, and the techniques used to accomplish this in Lisp are identified. A fully operational implementation of QPL exists, and has been used to conduct a variety of modelling experiments. The QPL programming environment, itself a natural extension of the distributed model, provides effective support for problem solving activities. The kernel of a successor to QPL, which is implemented using on-the-fly conversion to continuation passing style, is also defined. This supports a relational style of network description, and has proven to be an excellent vehicle for exploring and teaching contemporary topics in programming languages. Both versions of QPL provide a rich source of ideas which will form the basis of future work.
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Published date: 1990
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Local EPrints ID: 461800
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/461800
PURE UUID: 8a248444-9d7b-496a-8c5c-abc44a9c34ed
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Date deposited: 04 Jul 2022 18:55
Last modified: 04 Jul 2022 18:55
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Author:
David Charles De Roure
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