Session-based Distributed Programming in Java
Raymond Hu (homepage), Nobuko Yoshida (homepage), Kohei Honda (homepage)
Abstract
This paper demonstrates the impact of integrating session types and
object-oriented programming, through their implementation in Java.
Session types provide high-level abstraction for structuring a series
of interactions in a concise syntax, and ensure type-safe communications
between distributed peers. We present the first full implementation of a
language and runtime for session-based distributed programming featuring
asynchronous message passing, delegation, and session subtyping and
interleaving, combined with class downloading and failure handling. The
compilation-runtime framework of our language effectively maps session
abstraction onto underlying transports and guarantees communication
safety through static and dynamic session type checking. We have
implemented two alternative mechanisms for performing distributed session
delegation and prove their correctness. Benchmark results show session
abstraction can be realised with low runtime overhead.
Note: the latest version of SJ is located here. The materials on this page are no longer actively maintained.
Downloads:
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Paper: pdf.
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Slides from ECOOP '08 presentation: pdf.
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A basic tutorial on session programming in SJ, and compiling and running programs: pdf (draft).
A SessionJ compiler and runtime:
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Jar archives for running the current version (20080717) of the compiler and runtime: tar.gz. This archive also contains some example SessionJ programs under sj/tests/src.
Comments, questions and bug reports are very welcome.
This project is implemented using the Polyglot compiler framework.
Benchmark results from Section 5 of the above paper.
To compile an SJ program, from the sj directory do
bin/sjc tests/src/.../MyProgram.sj -d tests/classes/...
and to run a compiled program, do
bin/sj -cp tests/classes/... MyProgram
Note: the SJ compiler currently accepts only Java 1.4, due to the version of Polyglot used.
Some additional material:
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An earlier short version presented at ICOOOLPS '07: pdf.
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The full SessionJ distribution (20080717) including source: tar.gz.
Updated 2008-08-26.