A distributed object-oriented graphical programming system

This report presents the design of a distributed parallel object system (DPOS) and its implementation using a graphical editing interface. DPOS brings together concepts of object-oriented programming and graphical programming with aspects of modern functional languages. Programs are defined as networks of active processes called "Process Objects" and interconnecting communications lines. These active objects are independent single threaded programs that employ much of the modularity, encapsulation of function, and encapsulation of data found in sequential object-oriented programming. The system defines a clear and simple approach to generating and managing parallelism and interprocess communication in a distributed parallel environment. DPOS contributes several new solutions to the problems of distributed parallel programming that are improvements over existing systems. The key improvements of this system include: a more complete and versatile means of dynamic process creation; the specification of complex network topologies in an intuitively clear and understandable way; seperation of the management of parallelism from the definition of computation; automatic resolution of low level critical section issues; the ability to design and develop separate processes as traditional single threaded programs; the encapsulation and incremental development of programs subnetworks; application of graphical programming concepts to high level programming.