The join-calculus is a process calculus

Process calculus

In computer science, the process calculi are a diverse family of related approaches for formally modelling concurrent systems. Process calculi provide a tool for the high-level description of interactions, communications, and synchronizations between a collection of independent agents or processes...

 developed at INRIA. The join-calculus was developed to provide a formal basis for the design of distributed programming languages, and therefore intentionally avoids communications constructs found in other process calculi, such as rendezvous communications, which are difficult to implement in a distributed setting. Despite this limitation, the join-calculus is as expressive as the full -calculus

Pi-calculus

In theoretical computer science, the π-calculus is a process calculus originally developed by Robin Milner, and David Walker as a continuation of work on the process calculus CCS...

. Encodings of the -calculus in the join-calculus, and vice-versa, have been demonstrated.

The join-calculus is a member of the -calculus

Pi-calculus

In theoretical computer science, the π-calculus is a process calculus originally developed by Robin Milner, and David Walker as a continuation of work on the process calculus CCS...

 family of process calculi, and can be considered, at its core, an asynchronous -calculus with several strong restrictions:

• Scope restriction, reception, and replicated reception are syntactically merged into a single construct, the definition;
• Communication occurs only on defined names;
• For every defined name there is exactly one replicated reception.

However, as a language for programming, the join-calculus offers at least one convenience over the -calculus — namely the use of multi-way join patterns, the ability to match against messages from multiple channels simultaneously.

Languages based on the join-calculus

The join-calculus programming language

Join-calculus programming language

In computer science, the join-calculus is a programming language based on the identically-named join-calculus process calculus. It is implemented as an interpreter written in Ocaml, and supports statically-typed distributed programming, transparent remote communication, agent-based mobility, and...

 is based on the join-calculus process calculus. It is implemented as an interpreter written in OCaml, and supports statically typed distributed programming, transparent remote communication, agent-based mobility, and failure-detection.

JoCaml

JoCaml

JoCaml is an experimental functional programming language derived from OCaml. It integrates the primitives of the join-calculus to enable flexible, type-checked concurrent and distributed programming.- External links :* *...

 is a version of OCaml extended with join-calculus primitives.

Polyphonic C#

Polyphonic C sharp

Polyphonic C# is an extension of the C# programming language.It includes a new concurrency model in which objects can have both synchronous and asynchronous methods...

 and its successor Cω extend C#.

MC# and Parallel C# extend Polyphonic C# and also devoted to .NET.

Join Java

Join Java

Join Java is a programming language that extends the standard Java programming language with the join semantics of the join-calculus. It was written at the University of South Australia within the Reconfigurable Computing Lab by Dr...

 extends Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

.

The Boost.Join library is an implementation in C++.

A Concurrent Basic proposal that uses Join-calculus

External links

• INRIA, Join Calculus homepage