The network as a language construct

Abstract

The actor model inspires several important programming languages. In this model, communicating concurrent actors collaborate to produce a result. A pure actor language tends to turn systems into an organization-free collection of processes, however, even though most applications call for layered and tiered architectures. To address this lack of an organizational principle, programmers invent design patterns. This paper investigates integrating some of these basic patterns via a programming language construct. Specifically, it extends a calculus of communicating actors with a "network" construct so that actors can conduct scoped, tiered conversations. The paper then sketches how to articulate design ideas in the calculus, how to implement it, and how such an implementation shapes application programming. © 2014 Springer-Verlag.