These issues will be investigated in the context of Creol, an experimental high-level object-oriented language for distributed objects. The name is an acronym for Concurrent Reflective Object-oriented Language. The language is based on concurrent objects communicating by means of asynchronous method calls, and is formally defined with an operational semantics expressed in rewriting logic. The basic communication mechanisms and operational semantics of the language are described in [3, 12]. The inclusion of multiple inheritance in the language and the operational semantics is described in [9]. A type and effect system for the language is given in [4].
Specifications in rewriting logic are executable in the rewriting logic tool Maude. A prototype Maude interpreter for the communication basis of the Creol language has been developed and extended with a pseudo-deterministic rewrite strategy in order to better simulate the non-determinism of a distributed environment [13].
The language and the interpreter will gradually be extended to incorporate facilities for reflective programming, dynamic updates, and a coordination language based on viewpoint specifications (or behavioral interfaces) [14, 19]. An extension of the language and the interpreter with a dynamic class construct is presented in [7]. A binding strategy for method calls which is adapted to dynamic class extensions is presented in [6]. A type system for runtime class updates is presented in [5].
CREOL: An exciting mix of the best ingredients from many cultures!
