Synchronization abstraction in the BETA programming language

Abstract

This paper argues that synchronization of processes need not be part of the core of a programming language, but that they can just as well be built from existing abstractions — provided these are sufficiently flexible and general. BETA’s notion of patterns meets these requirements and we demonstrate the validity of our claims within this context. While discussing the use of patterns of synchronization and their implementation in BETA, we focus on a number of examples taken from BetaSIM, a high-level framework for discrete event simulation. The paper concludes with a discussion on how these ideas can be applied to other modern object-based programming languages, such as Java or Ada.