A New Transformation based on Process-Message Duality for Concurrent Logic Languages

In a concurrent logic language, mapping from the objects in a programmer's mind to actual processes and messages often results in less-than-optimum performance. One reason for this is that an incorrect prediction of the dynamic behavior and the resulting irrelevant mapping make the execution threads short and thus result in frequent suspensions. Also, good performance may be less important than the ease of writing and reading programs. Although in typical language processing systems for a concurrent logic language, shorter execution threads are likely to cause ine ciency, only few attempts extend the thread length by improving the scheduling policy of processing systems. We are proposing a new technique for extending thread length, by exchanging the roles of the processes and messages of a source program; we call this technique a duality transformation. This technique improves program performance without the need for modifying the language processing systems. Processes and messages in a concurrent logic language can perform the same roles, making it is possible to transform processes to messages, and vice versa. Furthermore, the notion of process-message duality not only improves e ciency, but also gives rise to new programming methodologies, which allow meta-level programming without meta-language facilities. In this paper, we discuss the concept of duality of processes and messages, details of the transformation to a dual program, and some actual applications of this transformation.