FlowLikeProjects

(moved text from FlowBasedProgramming)

Cognates (FBP-similar projects)

I know, the list is getting way too long! Badly in need of refactoring...

Actually, related concepts are spreading so fast that I can't keep up with them! Take a look at [Comega] - this looks like it will fit in beautifully, and it's Microsoft!

• Another Microsoft effort: VPL - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/robotics/aa731536.aspx

• Pentaho (http://www.pentaho.com)

• FBP-like tool called Kettle - sample at [[Kettle diagram]]

• IBM:

• WebSphere DataStage - All unix flavors, zOS/USS, MS Windows. This is a current product of the IBM Software Group, developed by Ascential Software, which was acquired by IBM in May 2005. DataStage is a data transformation tool that supports high volume parallel, scalable data movement and transformation for a wide array of business applications including data warehousing, business intelligence, optimization, etc. The entire platform is based on FBP principles, and has been sold since 1995.

• I find it surprising that people think of FBP as undiscovered. Every large-scale RDBMS is based on FBP principles internally, i.e., that's what they compile SQL into. There are a number of products like DataStage in the market based on FBP principles. We sell millions of dollars of these systems annually. - Mike Beckerle (beckerle@us.ibm.com)

• IBM's BatchPipes and HiperBatch? (also "systolic" programming) - see http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/grid/library/gr-ziseries/ - article by DavidKra. David also wrote me an interesting note - see David Kra's Protocol Converter.

• CMSTSOPipelines (JohnHartmann?)

• NIL/Hermes (RobStrom? at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights)

• Microflows - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/library/presents/AppDevIE/Microflows.html

• Various works by F. Leymann, often with others - e.g. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISJ/is_4_41/ai_94668336/

• "System S" - see http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_projects.nsf/pages/esps.index.html

• Visual Frameworks (TM) - http://www.visualframeworksinc.com

• Pervasive Software - http://www.pervasivedatarush.com

• Windows PowerShell? - previously Microsoft Shell or MSH (codenamed Monad) - "pipelines objects, rather than characters" - see http://arstechnica.com/guides/other/msh.ars, also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_shell. Quote from Wikipedia: "... unlike its Unix counterpart, the PowerShell? pipeline is an object pipeline; that is, the data passed between cmdlets are fully typed objects, rather than byte streams."

• Flow4J Eclipse Plug-in - http://flow4jeclipse.sourceforge.net/docs/index.html

• Wiki on FBP within Infrastructures.org - http://trac.t7a.org/isconf/wiki/FlowBasedProgramming

• Designing a system with C Executive - http://www.jmi.com/design.html -- thanks for these two entries, Steve!

• WorkFlow - see also Syrup

• LabView (LabView) - includes discussion with JimKring?

• Codito - http://www.codito.com/prodtech_framework.html

• Ptolemy - http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/

• Presentation tying together Ptolemy and other work - http://users.sdsc.edu/~ludaesch/ECS289F-W05/ECS289F-W05-9-swf.pdf
• Actor Oriented Programming with CAL - Johan Eker - http://www.lucas.lth.se/lucas-dagar/2002/slides2002/actororiented.pdf

• ICENI - http://www.lesc.ic.ac.uk/iceni/pdf/Grid2002.pdf (Grid Oriented Components)

• BWise - http://wiki.tcl.tk/bwise and for examples: http://wiki.tcl.tk/8565

• LARD - http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/apt/projects/tools/lard/

• Flare? - http://www.flare.org

• Fluix

• ETL - for DougLittle's summary of FBP concepts, see BasicConceptsofFBP - very good!

• SIMPL - Steve Freeman

• AORTA - RickardLundin?

• SALSA

• SWRadio - http://www.omg.org/docs/robotics/05-01-06.pdf
  • http://www.omg.org/news/meetings/workshops/SBC_2004_Manual/02-2_Demirbilek.pdf

• CommunicatingSequentialProcesses

• BusinessProcessExecutionLanguage (BPEL) - comment from PaulBrown? of FiveSightTechnologies?:
  • it strikes me that our BPEL engine uses something not un-FBP-like in basic concepts. We "compile" a BPEL process into a process algebraic expression where the terms are implemented as Actors [Agha] that communicate on named, Java-typed channels. Processes execute by the reduction of the expressions. We've named our version of that wheel "JaCOb?" (for Java Concurrent Objects).

• Axon - quote from WolfgangKeller?:
  • recently the R&D department of BBC released their Axon framework - which looks to me like a perfect "clone" of the concepts described in your FBP book. Only that they have never heard or read of FBP before. :-) And, at least for the current prototype stage, they are using Python for their implementation, especially the "generator" feature. See http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ - thanks, Wolfgang!
• More on Kamaelia at http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1210#comment-13266

• Omnimark 8 from Stilo - http://www.stilo.com/products/omnimark.html

• "Flow Design for Embedded Systems: A Radical New Unified Object-Oriented Methodology" - Barry Kauler, 1999, ISBN 087930555X (amazon.com, search).

• LindaLanguage.
  • FBP's InformationPackets? (IPs) resemble Linda's tuples (see TupleSpace), with a major difference: in Linda tuples are retrieved associatively, while in FBP InformationPackets?, or trees built using them (TreeIPs?), travel across BoundedBuffer connections between processes. You can simulate FBP in Linda, by attaching a sequential number to each IP in a stream, and you could certainly write FBP components which would retrieve data associatively. However, an FBP process can tell when its upstream processes have closed down, whereas in Linda I would assume this would be difficult.

• ErlangLanguage. Although FBP is more general, Erlang combines FBP and Prolog which proves to be very productive -- RobbertVanDalen

• SanScript

• Cocoon: http://cocoon.apache.org/

• A'UM (Yoshida and Chikayama) - ("A'UM - A Stream-based Concurrent Logic Object-Oriented Language", K. Yoshida et al, Proc 3rd Intl Conf Fifth Gen Comp Sys, Springer 1988, pp.638-649.)

• Vista (Visual Software Technique Approach) - see http://www.se.jku.at/people/schiffer/se-94-05/se-94-05.htm

• Linux STREAMS (LiS?) - see http://www.gcom.com/home/linux/lis/

• AVS [1] pioneered scientific data visualization using dataflow networks with a full drag'n'drop visual programming interface. The first family of products, culminating in AVS5, is pass-by-value and thus easily supported distributed dataflow networks. The second generation product AVS/Express? had a more powerful network language, with pass-by-reference semantics. See the user documentation for AVS/Express? visual programming [2]. AVS inspired imitations from GE (VTK), IBM (DX) and SGI (IE)...

• Visualization Toolkit (VTK) [3] An open-source tool written in C++.

• Data Explorer (DX) [4] IBM's visualization product released as open-source.

• Iris Explorer (IE) [5] SGI's visualization product now owned by NAG.

• StacklessPython - contains conversation with WolfgangKeller?, and post from CarlosRibeiro?'s blogspot.

• VNOS - see http://flame.cs.dal.ca/~gauvins/vnos-cd.pdf

• XPipe: http://xpipe.sourceforge.net/

• FSF (Flow Scheduling Framework) - see http://iris.usc.edu/~afrancoi/pdf/ICVS2001-paper.pdf

• Infopipes - see http://wwwagss.informatik.uni-kl.de/Projekte/Squirrel/slides/middleware014.pdf, and http://www.cse.ogi.edu/class/cse515/lectures/18%20-%20Infopipes%204up.pdf

• ActiveObjects (Ellis and Gibbs)

• Indus platform "The Indus platform thus enable modeling of any application as a set of concurrently executing agents that cooperatively execute tasks by coordinating with each other and composing/plugging components." http://developer.aumeganetworks.com/ Indus wiki: http://indus.wikicities.com/ At first glance this sounds a lot like FBP ... is it really?

• Deft - table oriented declarative programming - TomLaudeman and NoahHealy (lots of material on the Deft page). They are also working on what they are tentative calling HaikuTalk (Definitionary?)- not sure how it ties in with Deft.

• Deft seems to have affinities with Oracle's Project Marvel - see http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/webcolumns/2003/techarticles/smith_project_marvel.html, and also possibly JoeMorrison's Eleven - http://eleven.sourceforge.net.

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