Ernst-Erich Doberkat

ProSet-a language for prototyping with sets

The prototyping language ProSET (Prototyping with Sets) for experimental and evolutionary prototyping is discussed, with emphasis on algorithm design. Its features include generative communication, flexible exception handling, and the integration of persistence. Issues pertaining to the compiler and the programming environment are discussed.<<ETX>>

Investigating Strategies for Cooperative Planning of Independent Agents through Prototype Evaluation

This paper discusses the application of the prototyping approach to investigating the requirements on strategies for cooperative planning and conflict resolution of independent agents by means of an example application: the strategic game “Scotland Yard”. The strategies for coordinating the agents, which are parallel algorithms, are developed with a prototyping approach using ProSet-Linda. ProSet-Linda is designed for prototyping parallel algorithms.

Verwaltung persistenter Daten in einer Prototyping-Umgebung

Im Zentrum einer Programmierumgebung zur Unterstutzung des Software Prototyping steht die Sprache Pro Set, eine mengentheoretisch orientierte Breitbandsprache in der Nachfolge von SETL. Sie erlaubt die Modellierung von Programmen und persistenten Daten. Wir behandeln in dieser Arbeit die Verwaltung solcher persistenter Daten mit Hilfe eines hochperformanten Objektverwaltungssystems. Dazu diskutieren wir zunachst die zugrundeliegende Sprache und gehen auf den Mechanismus zur persistenten Datenhaltung in dieser Sprache ein. Nach einer Diskussion moglicher Datenbanksysteme zur Realisierung der sprachlichen Anforderungen zeigen wir, das sich die in Hagen entwickelte Variante HPCTE von PCTE besonders zur Realisierung dieser Ideen eignet und skizzieren die Implementierungsstrategie.

Re-usability and Software Prototyping

The next section will briefly introduce the Set Theoretic Language SETL as a language for specifying programs and it will characterise SETL. Here we will indicate how Cheatham’s approach [2] for re-using software may be realised using SETL. Section three will be devoted to the transformation approach which seems to be central as far as problems of re-usability within prototyping systems are concerned. Here we will first discuss dialect transformations in SETL and discuss a transformational system which translates SETL-code into Ada thus allowing re-usability of SETL-code in the production oriented environment. The fourth section will discuss re-usability in context of the so-called Hildesheim Libraries and the final section will discuss further development where we will outline a bit the development of tools furthering the use of SETL as a programming language, and we will briefly sketch an approach in which we make use of some of SETL’s concepts for the pure description of software components.