Lightweight session programming in scala

Alceste Scalas; Nobuko Yoshida

doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2016.21

Lightweight session programming in scala

Alceste Scalas, Nobuko Yoshida

College of Engineering and Physical Sciences

Research output: Chapter in Book/Published conference output › Conference publication

Abstract

Designing, developing and maintaining concurrent applications is an error-prone and time-consuming task; most difficulties arise because compilers are usually unable to check whether the inputs/outputs performed by a program at runtime will adhere to a given protocol specification. To address this problem, we propose lightweight session programming in Scala: we leverage the native features of the Scala type system and standard library, to introduce (1) a representation of session types as Scala types, and (2) a library, called lchannels, with a convenient API for session-based programming, supporting local and distributed communication. We generalise the idea of Continuation-Passing Style Protocols (CPSPs), studying their formal relationship with session types. We illustrate how session programming can be carried over in Scala: how to formalise a communication protocol, and represent it using Scala classes and lchannels, letting the compiler help spotting protocol violations. We attest the practicality of our approach with a complex use case, and evaluate the performance of lchannels with a series of benchmarks.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	30th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP 2016
Editors	Benjamin S. Lerner, Shriram Krishnamurthi
Pages	21:1-21:28
Volume	56
ISBN (Electronic)	9783959770149
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2016.21
Publication status	Published - 22 Jul 2016
Event	30th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP 2016 - Rome, Italy Duration: 18 Jul 2016 → 22 Jul 2016

Publication series

Name	30th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2016)
Publisher	Schloss Dagstuhl--Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik
ISSN (Print)	1868-8969

Conference

Conference	30th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP 2016
Country/Territory	Italy
City	Rome
Period	18/07/16 → 22/07/16

Bibliographical note

© Alceste Scalas and Nobuko Yoshida;
licensed under Creative Commons License CC-BY

Funding: Work partly supported by: EPSRC EP/K011715/1, EP/K034413/1 and EP/L00058X/1, and EU project
FP7-612985 UpScale.

Keywords

Concurrency
Scala
Session types

Access to Document

10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2016.21Licence: CC BY 3.0

Lightweight Session Programming in Scala
© Alceste Scalas and Nobuko Yoshida; licensed under Creative Commons License CC-BY
Final published version, 1.25 MBLicence: CC BY 3.0

Cite this

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title = "Lightweight session programming in scala",

abstract = "Designing, developing and maintaining concurrent applications is an error-prone and time-consuming task; most difficulties arise because compilers are usually unable to check whether the inputs/outputs performed by a program at runtime will adhere to a given protocol specification. To address this problem, we propose lightweight session programming in Scala: we leverage the native features of the Scala type system and standard library, to introduce (1) a representation of session types as Scala types, and (2) a library, called lchannels, with a convenient API for session-based programming, supporting local and distributed communication. We generalise the idea of Continuation-Passing Style Protocols (CPSPs), studying their formal relationship with session types. We illustrate how session programming can be carried over in Scala: how to formalise a communication protocol, and represent it using Scala classes and lchannels, letting the compiler help spotting protocol violations. We attest the practicality of our approach with a complex use case, and evaluate the performance of lchannels with a series of benchmarks.",

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doi = "10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2016.21",

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Scalas, A & Yoshida, N 2016, Lightweight session programming in scala. in BS Lerner & S Krishnamurthi (eds), 30th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP 2016. vol. 56, 30th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2016), pp. 21:1-21:28, 30th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP 2016, Rome, Italy, 18/07/16. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2016.21

Lightweight session programming in scala. / Scalas, Alceste; Yoshida, Nobuko.
30th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP 2016. ed. / Benjamin S. Lerner; Shriram Krishnamurthi. Vol. 56 2016. p. 21:1-21:28 (30th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2016)).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Published conference output › Conference publication

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N2 - Designing, developing and maintaining concurrent applications is an error-prone and time-consuming task; most difficulties arise because compilers are usually unable to check whether the inputs/outputs performed by a program at runtime will adhere to a given protocol specification. To address this problem, we propose lightweight session programming in Scala: we leverage the native features of the Scala type system and standard library, to introduce (1) a representation of session types as Scala types, and (2) a library, called lchannels, with a convenient API for session-based programming, supporting local and distributed communication. We generalise the idea of Continuation-Passing Style Protocols (CPSPs), studying their formal relationship with session types. We illustrate how session programming can be carried over in Scala: how to formalise a communication protocol, and represent it using Scala classes and lchannels, letting the compiler help spotting protocol violations. We attest the practicality of our approach with a complex use case, and evaluate the performance of lchannels with a series of benchmarks.

AB - Designing, developing and maintaining concurrent applications is an error-prone and time-consuming task; most difficulties arise because compilers are usually unable to check whether the inputs/outputs performed by a program at runtime will adhere to a given protocol specification. To address this problem, we propose lightweight session programming in Scala: we leverage the native features of the Scala type system and standard library, to introduce (1) a representation of session types as Scala types, and (2) a library, called lchannels, with a convenient API for session-based programming, supporting local and distributed communication. We generalise the idea of Continuation-Passing Style Protocols (CPSPs), studying their formal relationship with session types. We illustrate how session programming can be carried over in Scala: how to formalise a communication protocol, and represent it using Scala classes and lchannels, letting the compiler help spotting protocol violations. We attest the practicality of our approach with a complex use case, and evaluate the performance of lchannels with a series of benchmarks.

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ER -

Lightweight session programming in scala

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Access to Document

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Cite this