| Summary: | This thesis describes a framework for building a distributed concurrent system based on the
active object paradigm. An active object is an agent, such as a state machine, that only executes
in response to messages it receives, and can only communicate with other agents by
sending messages. Steam consists of a programming model, an application programming
interface and a concurrent runtime system to support the model. Steam offers an efficient
implementation of active objects. The implementation also supports location transparency,
dynamic re-configurability, and a form of atomicity. Steam is designed as a generic fi-amework
suitable for application in a variety of domains. It can be used directly as a runtime
system embedded within an application (eg. in a C program) or as a virtual machine for a
concurrent programming language such as COOL.
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