Prototyping reflective architectures for coordination constructs

Concurrency is fundamental to both the expressivity and efficiency of programs today. Systems of multiple concurrent processes require coordination. In the actor model, these coordination constructs are often designed in terms of meta-actors. But there are actually many different approaches to designing an actor meta-architecture, which in turn affect how coordination constructs can be designed. In this paper, we consider the application of request-based reflection to prototyping actor meta-architectures. We define the actor model in terms of a reflective language, and consider how this technique differs from other approaches. We then use the reflective language to introduce additional layers of functionality: local synchronization constraints, statically-assigned meta-actors, and dynamically-reassignable meta-actors. The examples indicate that request-based reflection is useful for prototyping a variety of different meta-architectural constructs.