To find out more about FBP, click on FBP. This will also tell you how to order a copy of the book.
The glossary will be expanded as time permits, without indicating which terms are new.
Material from book (plus any additions) starts here:
| 4GL |
4th Generation Language, typically
generating HLL statements |
| AMPS | Advanced Modular Processing System - first version of FBP used for production work (still in use at a major Canadian company) |
| Applicative | describes a language which does all of its processing by means of operators applied to values |
| Asynchronous | independent in time, unsynchronized |
| Automatic ports | unnamed input or output ports used to respectively delay a process, or indicate termination of a process, without code needing to be added to the processes involved |
| Brackets | IPs of a special type used to demarcate groupings of IPs within IP streams |
| C#FBP |
C# implementation of FBP concepts. For more information, see C#FBP . |
| Capacity | the maximum number of IPs a connection can hold at one time |
| Component | Reusable piece of code or reusable subnet |
| Composite Component | Component comprising more than one process (same as subnet) |
| Connection | Path between two processes, over which a data stream passes; connections have finite capacities (the maximum number of IPs they can hold at one time) |
| Connection Points | The point where a connection makes contact with a component |
| Control IP | an IP whose life-time corresponds exactly to the lifetime of a substream, which it can be said to "represent" |
| Coroutine | an earlier name for an FBP process |
| Descriptor | read-only module which can be attached to an IP describing it to generalized components |
| DFDM | Data Flow Development Manager, dialect of FBP - went on sale in Japan - sold several licences |
| DrawFBP |
FBP diagramming tool, written in Java. For more information, see DrawFBP . |
| Elementary Component | Component which is not a composite component |
| FBP | Flow-Based Programming |
| FPE | Flow Programming Environment - product that was to follow DFDM. It was developed quite far theoretically, but never reached the marketplace |
| Granularity | "Grain" size - see Chap. XXII - Performance Considerations |
| Higher-Level Language (HLL) | a language intermediate in level between Lower-Level Languages (e.g. Assembler) and 4th Generation Languages (4GLs) |
| Information Packet (IP) | an independent, structured piece of information with a well-defined lifetime (from creation to destruction) |
| Initial Information Packet (IIP) | data specified in the network definition, usually used as a parameter for a reusable component; it is converted into a "real" IP by means of a "receive" service call; it is only supported by THREADS & JavaFBP |
| JavaFBP |
Java implementation of FBP concepts. For more
information, see JavaFBP . |
| JFBP |
Old name for Java implementation of FBP
concepts - see JavaFBP. |
| Looper | a component which does not exit after each IP has been handled, but "loops" back to get another one |
| Non-looper | a component which exits after each IP has been handled, rather than "looping" back to get another one |
| OOP |
Object-Oriented Programming |
| Port | The point where a connection makes contact with a process |
| Root IP | The root of a tree of IPs |
| Process | Asynchronously executing piece of logic - in FBP, same as "thread" |
| Stream | Sequence of IPs passing across a given connection |
| Substream- sensitivity |
a characteristic of some ports of a composite component where brackets are treated as end of data |
| Thread |
Same as "process" in FBP - often referred to as
"lightweight" process |
| THREADS | C-based FBP implementation. The API is described in "THREADS API and Network Specification"). For the code, just click on THREADS (you may have to shift and click). |
| Tree | Complex structure of linked IPs, able to be sent and received as a single unit |
| Synchronous | Coordinated in time (at the same time) |
| WYSIWYG | "What You See Is What You Get" (describes a tool where the image shown to the developer closely matches the final result in appearance) |