Partitioning Ada programs for distributed platforms

Abstract

Few work has been done in the past which has dealt with programming for loosely coupled distributed systems. However, distributed execution is becoming increasingly important for real time systems, since most of them are implemented with distributed processors. Programming multiprocessors through a single program approach offers many advantages from a software engineering point of view like, abstract data types, separate compilation etc. However, few systems currently exist which allow programmers to develop software for distributed platforms through a single program, in a transparent fashion. In this context, Ada assumes great importance as, the Ada Language Reference Manual indicates that distributed execution was one of the goals of the designers. One of the most important attempts towards a distributed Ada system has been that of D. Cornhill (1984), in defining an Ada Program Partitioning Language (APPL). This system facilitates a distributed execution of Ada programs among a set of processors with a wide range of granularity. However in specific the distributable units of an Ada program using the constructs of APPL in an automatic fashion no attempt has been done in the past. Our goal has been towards developing a Ada Program Partitioning Tool to generate a distribution specification in a completely automated manner. A high level design of the tool is shown. We describe the techniques developed and the results obtained in subsequent sections. >