Title:

MELDC: A Reflective Object-Oriented Coordination Language

Author(s):

Kaiser, Gail E.
Hseushy, Wenwey
Leez, James C.
Wu, Shyhtsun Felix
Woo, Esther
Hilsdale, Eric
Meyer, Scott

Date:

1993

Type:

Technical reports

Department:

Computer Science

Permanent URL:

http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:12301

Series:

Columbia University Computer Science Technical Reports

Part Number:

CUCS-001-93

Publisher:

Department of Computer Science, Columbia University

Publisher Location:

New York

Abstract:

A coordination language, MELDC, for open systems programming is presented. MELDC is a C-based, concurrent, distributed object-oriented language built on a reflective architecture. Unlike other language research, the focus of MELDC is not only to study what specific language features should be designed for solving certain open system problems but also to provide programmers a high-level and efficient way to construct new features without modifying the language internals. The key to the reflective feature is the metaclass that supports shadow objects to implement secondary behaviors of objects. Thus, the behavior of an object can be extended by dynamically composing multiple secondary behaviors with the object’s primary behavior defined in the class. In this paper, both the MELDC programming model and the reflective architecture are described. Then, we introduce the mechanism of dynamic composition as well as its application in building distributed and persistent systems. In particular, a soft real-time network management system, MELDNET, is built on top of MELDC to monitor the EtherNet performance. Finally, the current status of MELDC is given.

Subject(s):

Computer science

Item views:

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Metadata:

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