A UNITY-style programming logic for shared dataspace programs

Abstract

The term shared dataspace refers to the general class of programming languages in which the principal means of communication among the concurrent components of programs is a common, content-addressable data structure called a dataspace. In the programming language and artificial intelligence communities, there is considerable interest in such languages, e.g., logic-based languages, production rule systems, and the Linda language. However, these languages have not been the subject of extensive program verification research. This paper specifies a proof system for a shared dataspace programming notation called Swarm-a programming logic similar in style to that of UNITY. The paper then uses the proof system to reason about a Swarm program to label the equal-intensity regions of a digital image.

Mixed programming metaphors in a shared dataspace model of concurrency

“…This is, in part, because we see Swarm, not so much as a language, but as a framework for investigating concurrency paradigms and languages. This work forms the basis for further investigation of programming methodologies [29], proof systems [12,13,30], and approaches to program visualization [28].…”

“…The reader interested in how one might verify this program with respect to the earlier problem specification may turn to [12] or [13].…”

“…A formal operational model is relegated to the Appendix. UNITY-like assertional programming logics have also been developed for Swarm; these programming logics are described in [12], [13], and [30].…”

“…Our study of the shared dataspace paradigm has a very broad scope, encompassing the development of formal (operational and axiomatic) semantic models [12,13,30], novel programming metaphors specific to the shared dataspace paradigm [29], and new approaches to visualizing concurrent computations [28]. This paper reports the progress toward the development of the Swarm model and a few of its programming implications.…”

Verification of Distributed Dataspace Architectures

“…We also aim at being able to compare the two paradigms, but we take a more unifying perspective: we consider both as being particular instances of the more general distributed dataspace model and express them in the same framework. [10] was the first attempt to use a Unity-like logic to reason on a shared dataspace coordination model (Swarm). [19] has goals similar to ours.…”