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The evolution of the SR language

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Abstract

As a result of our experience, the SR distributed programming language has evolved. One change is that resources and processes are now dynamic rather than static. Another change is that operations and processes are now integrated in a novel way: all the mechanisms for process interaction — remote and local procedure call, rendezvous, dynamic process creation, and asynchronous message passing — are expressed in similar ways. This paper explains the rationale for these and other changes. We examine the fundamental issues faced by the designers of any distributed programming language and consider the ways in which these issues could be addressed. Special attention is given to the design objectives of expressiveness, simplicity, and efficiency.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, The University of Arizona, 85721, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Gregory R. Andrews & Ronald A. Olsson

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  1. Gregory R. Andrews
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  2. Ronald A. Olsson
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Additional information

Gregory R. Andrews was born in Olympia, WA, in 1947. He received the B.S. degree in mathematics from Stanford University in 1969 and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Washington in 1974. From 1974–1979 he was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University. Since 1979 he has been an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Arizona. During 1983–1984, he was a Visiting Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington. He has also consulted for the U.S. Army Electronics Command and Cray Laboratories. His research interests include concurrent programming languages and distributed operating systems; he is currently co-authoring (with Fred Schneider) a textbook on concurrent programming. Dr. Andrews is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). From 1980–1983 he was Secretary-Treasurer of the ACM Special Interest Group on Operating Systems. He has also been on the Board of Editors of Information Processing Letters since 1979.

Ronald A. Olsson was born in Huntington, NY, in 1955. He received B.A. degrees in mathematics and computer science and the M.A. degree in mathematics from the State University of New York, College at Potsdam, in 1977. In 1979, he received the M.S. degree in computer science from Cornell University. He was a Lecturer of Computer Science at the State University of New York, College at Brockport, from 1979 to 1981. Since 1981 he has been a graduate student in computer science at the University of Arizona and will complete his Ph.D. in June 1986. His research interests include programming languages, operating systems, distributed systems, and systems software. Mr. Olsson is a student member of the Association for Computing Machinery.

This work is supported by NSF under Grant DCR-8402090, and by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Grant AFOSR-84-0072. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes not-withstanding any copyright notices thereon

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Andrews, G.R., Olsson, R.A. The evolution of the SR language. Distrib Comput 1, 133–149 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01661168

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