Towards Customisable Tuple Field Matching in VLOS

Chung, V.-L. and McDonald, C.

VLOS is a research project investigating the feasibility of a tuple space-based distributed operating system for use on small to medium sized clusters of Intel TM PC based computers. Arguments are made that providing a mechanism by which tuple field matching expressions can be redefined from the usual 'bitwise-binary' matching schemes to more complex (user-defined) matching expressions, would allow tuple space-based communications to be involved in the provision of distributed computational resources. These matching schemes also help simplify the complexity of distributed applications, by moving some of the computation from the applicant to the coordination medium. A test implementation of a tuple field matching system is described; the MiniMe matching expression language is an in-kernel complier whose language has been designed specifically to disallow dangerous operations. Several examples of MiniMe matching spressions are shown. The protocol used by nodes to propagate expression matching changes is described here. The task that has redefined a tuple field matching expression blocks until the changes have been propagated across the cluster. These semantics ensure that the distributed application does not attempt to perform any operations using the tuple space prior to the field matching rule redefinition being propagated globally.

Cite as: Chung, V.-L. and McDonald, C. (2003). Towards Customisable Tuple Field Matching in VLOS. In Proc. Twenty-Sixth Australasian Computer Science Conference (ACSC2003), Adelaide, Australia. CRPIT, 16. Oudshoorn, M. J., Ed. ACS. 317-323.

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