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Concurrent models for Linda with transactions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2004

ROBERTO BRUNI
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa, Via F. Buonarrot, m 2, 56127 Pisa, Italybruni@di.unipi.it; ugo@di.unipi.it
UGO MONTANARI
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa, Via F. Buonarrot, m 2, 56127 Pisa, Italybruni@di.unipi.it; ugo@di.unipi.it

Abstract

Nowadays concepts, languages and models for coordination cannot leave aside the needs of the increasing number of commercial applications based on global computing over the (inter)net. For example, platforms like Microsoft .NET and Sun Microsystems Java come equipped with packages for supporting ad hoc transactional features, which are essential for most business applications. We show how to extend the coordination language par excellence (viz. Linda) with basic primitives for transactions, while retaining a formal model for its concurrent computations. This is achieved by exploiting a variation of Petri nets, called zero-safe nets, where transactions can be suitably modelled by distinguishing between stable places (ordinary ones) and zero places (where tokens can only be temporarily allocated, defining hidden states). The relevance of the transaction mechanism is illustrated in terms of expressive power. Finally, it is shown that stable places and transactions viewed as atomic steps define an abstract semantics that is apt for a fully algebraic treatment, as demonstrated via categorical adjunctions between suitable categories of nets.

Type
Paper
Copyright
2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Research supported by the FET-GC Project IST-2001-32747 AGILE and by the Italian MIUR Project COFIN 2001013518 COMETA. The first author is also supported by an Italian CNR fellowship for research on Information Sciences and Technologies, and by the Computer Science Department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.