A Functional Database Phil Trinder D.Phil. Thesis Wolfson College Michaelmas Term, 1989 This thesis explores the use of functional languages to implement, manipulate and query databases. Implementing databases. A functional language is used to construct a database manager that allows efficient and concurrent access to shared data. In contrast to the locking mechanism found in conventional databases, the functional database uses data dependency to provide exclusion. Results obtained from a prototype database demonstrate that data dependency permits an unusual degree of concurrency between operations on the data. The prototype database is used to exhibit some problems that seriously restrict concurrency and also to demonstrate the resolution of these problems using a new primitive. The design of a more realistic database is outlined. Some restrictions on the data structures that can be used in a functional database are also uncovered. Manipulating databases. Functions over the database a...

Traditional computer simulation terminology includes taxonomic divisions with terms such as "discrete event," "continuous," and "process oriented." Even though such terms have become familiar to simulation researchers, the terminology is distinct from other disciplines ---such as artificial intelligence and software engineering--- which have similar goals relating specifically to modelling dynamic systems. There is a need to unify terminology among these disciplines so that system modelling is formalized in a common framework. We present a perspective that serves to characterize simulation models in terms of their procedural versus declarative orientations since these two orientations are prevalent throughout most modelling disciplines that we have encountered. We used a sample dynamic system (e.g., two jug problem) found in artificial intelligence to highlight the connecting threads in system modelling within each discipline. Moreover, in teaching simulation students using this perspe...

One of the most important contributions of A. Church to logic is his invention of the lambda calculus. We present the genesis of this theory and its two major areas of application: the representation of computations and the resulting functional programming languages on the one hand and the representation of reasoning and the resulting systems of computer mathematics on the other hand. Acknowledgement. The following persons provided help in various ways. Erik Barendsen, Jon Barwise, Johan van Benthem, Andreas Blass, Olivier Danvy, Wil Dekkers, Marko van Eekelen, Sol Feferman, Andrzej Filinski, Twan Laan, Jan Kuper, Pierre Lescanne, Hans Mooij, Robert Maron, Rinus Plasmeijer, Randy Pollack, Kristoffer Rose, Richard Shore, Rick Statman and Simon Thompson. Partial support came from the European HCM project Typed lambda calculus (CHRXCT-92-0046), the Esprit Working Group Types (21900) and the Dutch NWO project WINST (612-316-607). 1. Introduction This paper is written to honor Church's gr...

this paper, we shall formulate accumulations as higher order catamorphisms , and propose several general transformation rules for calculating accumulations (i.e., finding and manipulating accumulations) by calculation-based (rather than a search-based) program transformation methods. Some examples are given for illustration.

We describe a programming language called Symmetric Lisp that treats environments as first­class objects. Symmetric Lisp allows programmers to write expressions that evaluate to environments, and to create and denote variables and constants of type environment as well. One consequence is that the roles filled in other languages by a variety of limited, special purpose environment forms like records, structures, closures, modules, classes and abstract data types are filled instead by a single versatile and powerful structure. In addition to being its fundamental structuring tool, environments also serve as the basic functional object in the language. Because the elements of an environment are evaluated in parallel, Symmetric Lisp is a parallel programming language; because they may be assembled dyamically as well as statically, Symmetric Lisp accomodates an unusually flexible and simple (parallel) interpreter as well as other history­sensitive applications requiring dynamic environments. We show that first­class environments bring about fundamental changes in a language's structure: conventional distinctions between declarations and expressions, data structures and program structures, passive modules and active processes disappear. We argue that the resulting language is clean, simple and powerful.

syntax, and syntactic and semantic domains of a flow graph Figure 9. Semantic equations Def and Exp of a flow graph The first argument to the functions Def and Exp specifies a set of nodes that represent a flow graph, from which the element(s) of current interest are selected by pattern matching.

Implementations of lazy evaluation for non-strict functional languages usually involve the notion of a delayed representation of the value of an expression, which we call a thunk. We present several techniques for implementing thunks and formalize a class of optimizations that reduce both the space and time overhead of these techniques. The optimizations depend on a compile-time inferencing strategy called path analysis, a generalization of strictness analysis that uncovers order-of-evaluation information. Although the techniques in this paper are focused on the compilation of a non-strict functional language for a conventional architecture, they are directly applicable to most of the virtual machines commonly used for implementing such languages. The same techniques also apply to other forms of delayed evaluation such as futures and promises. 1

In this thesis we address the challenges associated with the provision of dynamic software architectures. These are systems in which programs are constructed from separately compiled units with a facility for the replacement of these units at runtime. Typical examples of applications which will benefit from this dynamic approach are long-lived systems in which downtime is highly undesirable, for example, web-servers, database engines, and equipment controllers. In addition, dynamic software architectures are also gaining popularity with the recent advent of wide-area Internet applications, where it is often impractical to compile a program in its entirety or begin execution in a single step. Our approach to dynamic software architectures differs from earlier attempts in that we guarantee the safety of the replacement operation. This is done by founding our techniques on the rigour of strong typing. In the first half of the thesis we take an existing static software architecture with strong typing facilities and modular program construction, namely the Standard ML platform, and equip

The aim of the FAST Project is to provide an implementation of a functional language, Haskell, on a transputer array. An important component of the system is a highly optimising compiler for Haskell to a single transputer. This paper presents a methodology for describing the optimisations and code generation for such a compiler, which allows the exploitation of many standard and some new techniques in a clear and concise notation. Results are included showing that the optimisations give significant improvement over the standard combinator and (Johnsson's 1984) G-machine implementations. 1 Introduction The FAST (Functional programming for ArrayS of Transputers) Project, funded by the UK government, is a collaboration between the University of Southampton, Imperial College, London and Meiko Ltd. of Bristol. The aim is to provide an implementation of a pure, lazy, functional language such as Haskell [12] on transputer arrays. The methodology for distribution is a variant of the process ...

Existing functional languages appear not to be suitable for implementing systems which are inherently concurrent, such as operating system environments. Adaptations to functional languages developed to support such applications have in the past always involved the introduction of non-determinism.