A language to comprehend and manage distributed worlds

Abstract

The paper presents and discusses the details of the Spatial Grasp Language (SGL), including its philosophy, methodology, syntax, semantics, and implementation in distributed systems. As a key element of the developed Spatial Grasp Model and Technology, SGL has been used in nu-merous applications and publications, including seven books. This inspired us to devote the cur-rent paper exclusively to the main features of this language and comparison with other lan-guages as a tribute to its impact on the Distributed Management Project at the National Acade-my of Sciences, with strong international participation and support. The comparison with other programming languages shows high level, simplicity, and compactness of the obtained solu-tions, which are explained by the fact that SGL operates directly on distributed networked bod-ies in a holistic, parallel, self-navigation and pattern matching mode. This effectively puts up-side down the established practice and opinion that parallel and distributed computing is essen-tially more complex than sequential programming. In comparison with specialized battle man-agement languages oriented on command and control of military campaigns, the SGL pro-gramming example shows high clarity and efficiency for expressing campaigns with spatial movement and maintenance of the needed resources, also confirming its universal ability for extended applications in similar areas. The relation of SGL to natural languages is shown where globally recursive SGL organization can be directly used for describing and analyzing natural language structures of any volume and complexity, just by adding new rules to the SGL defini-tion. SGL can also effectively substitute natural languages for a high-level and quick definition of complex spatial problems and their solutions due to its power, compactness, and formula-like recursive nature.