Task-oriented programming in a pure functional language

Abstract

Task-Oriented Programming (TOP) is a novel programming paradigm for the construction of distributed systems where users work together on the internet. When multiple users collaborate, they need to interact with each other frequently. TOP supports the definition of tasks that react to the progress made by others. With TOP, complex multiuser interactions can be programmed in a declarative style just by defining the tasks that have to be accomplished, thus eliminating the need to worry about the implementation detail that commonly frustrates the development of applications for this domain. TOP builds on four core concepts: tasks that represent computations or work to do which have an observable value that may change over time, data sharing enabling tasks to observe each other while the work is in progress, generic type driven generation of user interaction, and special combinators for sequential and parallel task composition. The semantics of these core concepts is defined in this paper. As an example we present the iTask3 framework, which embeds TOP in the functional programming language Clean.

Building a Generic Feedback System for Rule-Based Problems

“…This section illustrates and motivates our goal of providing help to people using a rule-based problem solving system by giving three examples: the Ideas framework [7], PuzzleScript [13], and the iTasks system [18]. Each of these frameworks can describe a variety of problems.…”

“…iTasks [18] supports task-oriented programming in the pure functional programming language Clean [19]. It allows for rapid workflow program development, by using the concept of task as an abstraction.…”

“…shipTask implements the C2 system. First, it uses the standard task for viewing information, stored in the Shared Data Sources [18] (SDS), to display the current state. Then, it uses the step combinator > >?…”

“…The components in the DSL follow naturally from the Russell and Norvig definition, except for the RuleTree. The design of the RuleTree is loosely based on strategy languages from the Ideas framework [7], iTask combinators [18], and the strategy language presented by Visser and others [26].…”

A Distributed Dynamic Architecture for Task Oriented Programming

“…This feature is used to enable TOP in iTasks: for any first-order data type that arises when modeling the application domain, code is generated to deal with (de-)serialization, rendering GUIs, transferring data between tasks and shared data sources, and so on. TOP has a small core [16]. There are only three core concepts in TOP: tasks, editors, and shared data sources, and a monadic, applicative combinator library featuring two core task combinators: step and parallel.…”