12.4. Historical Resources

JavaSpaces technology is the descendant of almost two decades of academic research on space-based systems. The genesis of space-based systems is David Gelernter's Linda coordination language, which was developed at Yale University in the early 1980s. Gelernter's original paper remains the definitive work on the space- and time-uncoupled nature of space-based systems and offers many insights into the paradigm:

• “Generative Communication in Linda,” by David Gelernter, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, Vol. 7, No. 1 (January, 1985), pp. 80-112.

More recent publications by Gelernter and Nicholas Carriero focus on common programming idioms in tuple-based systems. While these publications have a bias toward parallel computation, the techniques are applicable to distributed applications as well. For a short read, refer to:

• “How to Write Parallel Programs: A Guide to the Perplexed,” by Nicholas Carriero and David Gelernter, ACM Computing Surveys (Sept., 1989).

A more in-depth treatment can be found in:

• How to Write Parallel Programs: A First Course, by Nicholas Carriero and David Gelernter (MIT Press, 1990).

For a vision of how tuple-based systems can harness the computing power of networked machines and can be used to create continually updating software models of the real world, please see:

• Mirror Worlds: Or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox . . . How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean, by David Gelernter (Oxford University Press, 1991).