The essence of data access in Cω The power is in the dot!

In this paper we describe the data access features of Cω, an experimental programming language based on C currently under development at Microsoft Research. Cω targets distributed, data-intensive applications and accordingly extends C’s support of both data and control. In the data dimension it provides a type-theoretic integration of the three prevalent data models, namely the object, relational, and semi-structured models of data. In the control dimension Cω provides elegant primitives for asynchronous communication. In this paper we concentrate on the data dimension. Our aim is to describe the essence of these extensions; by which we mean we identify, exemplify and formalize their essential features. Our tool is a small core language, FCω, which is a valid subset of the full Cω language. Using this core language we are able to formalize both the type system and the operational semantics of the data access fragment of Cω.