Visualising coordination languages for parallel processing

This paper describes a graphical programming interface for Linda-coordinated languages. To support visual editing of programs written in an ordinary computation language (e.g. C) coordinated through Linda, two separate graphical notations are proposed, one for representing Linda´s tuple space templates, the other for the ordinary (or host) language. The text program automatically generated from the program graphs can be compiled and executed on either a shared-memory MIMD machine or a loosely coupled network of workstations. The tuple space communication structure can be visualised after the program construction. The animation of the dynamic behaviour of templates within the tuple space is integrated into the environment, so that the program execution can be monitored and the program modified, if necessary, for the next iteration of the program development.<>