Application specific conversation schemes for ADA programs

Abstract

The paper considers a development of the conversation scheme version proposed by A. Clematis and V. Gianuzzi in Microprocessing and Microprogramming (Vol. 32, No. 1–5, 1991) [5] and Computer Languages (Vol. 18, No. 3, 1993) [6]. The authors discussed the methodology of using conversations within a conventional concurrent language (Ada), which makes the conversation scheme practical. In our paper we concentrate on the improvements for their scheme. We believe that it is important for the programmer to have more choice, and propose what could be called a library of schemes from which the appropriate scheme could be chosen depending on the application. We discuss ways of setting dynamically the number of processes participating in a conversation; of having different sets of servers involved in different alternates of the same conversation; of introducing a global acceptance test which would be more sophisticated; of increasing robustness of the conversation. All of these proposals are meant to be used within a conventional language.