Abstract.The space calculus is introduced as a language to model distributed dataspace systems, i.e. distributed applications that use a shared (but possibly distributed) dataspace to coordinate. The publish-subscribe and the global dataspace are particular instances of our model. We give the syntax and operational semantics of this language and provide tool support for functional and performance analysis of its expressions. Functional behaviour can be checked by an automatic translation to μCRL and the use of a model checker. Performance analysis can be done using an automatically generated distributed C prototype.