Combining Event-driven and Capsule-oriented Programming to Improve Integrated System Design

By: Jackson Maddox

Abstract

As concurrent software becomes more pervasive, models that provide both safe concurrency and modular reasoning become more important. Panini is one such model, and provides both sparse and cognizant interference based around the concept of capsules. Additionally, web frameworks, Graphical User Interface (GUI) libraries, and other projects are event-driven in nature, making events a commonly used programming paradigm for certain tasks. However, it would be difficult to use Panini in an event-driven manner, where there may be multiple capsules interested in a given event. Therefore, by integrating capsules and events one would be able to apply Panini’s modular reasoning to commonly event-driven tasks more easily. Several challenges must be addressed in the integration. These are defining the semantics of event messages, scheduling of handlers to maximize concurrency, and how to keep to Panini’s current semantics which allow modular reasoning. To solve this problem, @Paninij, an implementation of Panini, is extended to add event mechanisms to capsules. As a result, this new combined model allows capsules to interact using both procedures and event announcements. This extension of Panini is helpful for writing concurrent, modular software that lends itself more naturally to event-driven programming.

ACM Reference

Maddox, J. 2017. Combining Event-driven and Capsule-oriented Programming to Improve Integrated System Design. Technical Report #17-01. Iowa State University, Dept. of Computer Science.

BibTeX Reference

@techreport{maddox2017-a,
   title = {Combining Event-driven and Capsule-oriented Programming to Improve Integrated System Design},
   author = {Maddox, Jackson},
   year = {2017},
   month = {July},
   institution = {Iowa State University, Dept. of Computer Science},
   number = {17-01},
   abstract = {
    As concurrent software becomes more pervasive, models that provide both safe
    concurrency and modular reasoning become more important.
    Panini is one such model, and provides both sparse and cognizant interference
    based around the concept of capsules.
    Additionally, web frameworks, Graphical User Interface (GUI) libraries, and
    other projects are event-driven in nature, making events a commonly used
    programming paradigm for certain tasks.
    However, it would be difficult to use Panini in an event-driven manner, where
    there may be multiple capsules interested in a given event.
    Therefore, by integrating capsules and events one would be able to apply
    Panini's modular reasoning to commonly event-driven tasks more easily.
    Several challenges must be addressed in the integration.
    These are defining the semantics of event messages, scheduling of handlers to
    maximize concurrency, and how to keep to Panini's current semantics which allow
    modular reasoning.
    To solve this problem, @Paninij, an implementation of Panini, is extended to add
    event mechanisms to capsules.
    As a result, this new combined model allows capsules to interact using both
    procedures and event announcements.
    This extension of Panini is helpful for writing concurrent, modular software
    that lends itself more naturally to event-driven programming.
   }
}