Clean - CORBA Interface Supporting Pipeline Skeleton ∗

Modern functional programming deals with parallel and distributed computation. The lazy functional programming language Clean was extended for cluster computations using CORBA as middleware. The earlier Clean-CORBA interface supports developing and using skeletons for distributed and cluster computing in a limited way only. The interface user encounters three major problems. Clean skeletons are parameterized by types while the IDL compiler does not generate stubs for polymorphic functions. The other major problem is that there is a need for such a component of the middleware system which starts the skeleton according to a strategy given as a parameter. The third problem is that the actual Clean-CORBA does not support asynchronous communication. The present paper proposes solutions for the above problems. By introducing a pattern language for generic description, the Clean-CORBA skeletons are extended with the description of the formal parameters: type parameters and strategy parameters. The user of the skeletons provides the description of the actual parameters corresponding to the formal parameters. Additionally to the Clean and the IDL compilers, we propose a code generator, which interprets the formal and actual parameters, generates IDL descriptions and instances of the server objects according to the actual parameters, invokes the IDL and the Clean compilers for generating stubs and objects. The second problem is solved by running such objects at each computing node, which starts the components of the skeleton according to the actual strategy. The implementation of the channels supports the asynchronous communication.