A generative communication service for database interoperability

Parallel and distributed programming is conceptually harder to undertake and to understand than sequential programming, because a programmer often has to manage the coexistence and coordination of multiple concurrent activities. The model of 'Generative Communication' in Linda-a paradigm that has been developed for parallel computing-emphasizes the decoupling of cooperating parallel processes; thus, relieving the programmer from the burden of having to consider all process inter-relations explicitly. In many application areas, data is distributed over a multitude of heterogeneous, autonomous information systems. These systems are often isolated and an exchange of data among them is not easy. On the other hand, support for dynamic exchange of data is required to improve the business processes. Cooperative information systems enable such autonomous systems to interoperate. They are complex systems of systems which require a well designed and flexible software architecture. The Linda model had a great influence on research in parallel programming languages. Stimulated by this success, a Generative Communication Service, which offers a very flexible associative addressing mechanism based on metadata matching, has been developed for supporting interoperability of cooperative information systems. Some design patterns guided the construction of the resulting communication service that has been implemented on top of CORBA for an ODMG canonical data model.