Document Actions
SERP'06 Keynote Lecture
| Composition by Interaction
Professor Farhad Arbab CWI and Leiden University The Netherlands Date: TBA Time: TBA Location: TBA |
Since the inception of programming, composition of algorithms has served
as the driving force behind software composition. The models and
techniques that have emerged out of this focus do not adequately meet
our modern requirements, such as third-party composition of black-box
components, or dynamic composition of the behavior of independent
distributed subsystems and services. Concurrency arises naturally as a
primary concern in these settings.
Handling non-trivial forms of concurrency often requires complex
protocols to coordinate the interactions of the parties involved.
Decades of theoretical and practical work in the field of concurrency
has culminated in substantial experience with various aspects of
interaction and protocols. Curiously, however, up to now interaction has
not been considered as a first-class concept in any constructive model
of computation. This makes protocols generally non-compositional, and
concurrency far more difficult than necessary.
The inadequacy of our contemporary software composition techniques and
our neglect to treat interaction as a first-class concept seem to be
intertwined. In this talk, we describe our work on Reo. Reo presents a
compositional model for construction of complex concurrent systems out
of simpler parts, using interaction as the only first-class concept.
Based on a calculus of channel composition, Reo offers a simple, yet
surprisingly expressive, formal framework for component-based and
service-oriented computing.
Biography
Farhad Arbab received his PhD from UCLA in 1982. Currently, he is a
Professor of Computer Science and Leids University Foundation Chair of
Software Composition at the Leiden University; a Senior Researcher in
the Software Engineering Department at the Dutch national research
Center for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) in Amsterdam; and an
Adjunct Professor in the School of Computer Science, at the University
of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His fields of interest include Software
Composition, Component Based Systems, Service Oriented Computing,
Concurrency Theory, Coordination Models and Languages, Parallel and
Distributed Computing, Visual Programming Environments, Constraints,
Logic and Object Oriented Programming.
Professor Farhad Arbab
CWI and Leiden University, The Netherlands
Email: Farhad.Arbab@cwi.nl
Website: http://homepages.cwi.nl/~farhad/
