Messages versus Messengers in Distributed Programming

Messengers are autonomous objects, each capable of navigating through the underlying network and performing various tasks at each node. Messengers applications are written usingnavigationalcommands rather than thesend/receiveprimitives of conventional message-passing approaches. In this paper we con...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of parallel and distributed computing Vol. 57; no. 2; pp. 188 - 211
Main Authors Fukuda, Munehiro, Bic, Lubomir F., Dillencourt, Michael B., Cahill, Jason M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published San Diego, CA Elsevier Inc 01.05.1999
Elsevier
Subjects
Access methods and protocols, osi model
Applied sciences
Computer science; control theory; systems
Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface
Exact sciences and technology
Software
Software engineering
Telecommunications
Telecommunications and information theory
Teleprocessing networks. Isdn
Software development
System performance
Computer network
Transmission protocol
Distributed system
Algorithm
Message transmission
Software engineering
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Summary:Messengers are autonomous objects, each capable of navigating through the underlying network and performing various tasks at each node. Messengers applications are written usingnavigationalcommands rather than thesend/receiveprimitives of conventional message-passing approaches. In this paper we contrast the two programming styles. From a software engineering viewpoint, the navigational style generally results in a smaller semantic gap between abstract algorithm descriptions and their actual implementations, which makes programs easier to construct, understand, and maintain. In terms of performance, Messengers programs are highly competitive with message-passing. We demonstrate these advantages using two concrete applications programmed using Messengers and PVM.
ISSN:0743-7315
1096-0848
DOI:10.1006/jpdc.1999.1533