Supporting database access in the Hermes programming language

The work reported in this paper is part of a project aimed at designing and prototyping a n application development environment that allows easy development of platform-independen t distributed applications . The main goals of th e database subproject are to investigate methods for (1) providing (SQL) database acces s and (2) supporting transaction managemen t within a distributed programming environmen t based on the paradigm of communicating sequential processes . This paper looks at how SQL database access can be provided in Hermes, a new language for distributed programming based on this paradigm . The paper compares the characteristics of Hermes and SQ L tables, discusses potential ways of supportin g database access in Hermes, and then define s an embedding of SQL in Hermes . Some implementation aspects are also discussed .