Distributed Concurrent Constraint Programming

We investigate the problem of building distributed systems within the Concurrent Constraint programming framework (CC). CC languages form a shared memory constraint-based model of calculus and some of its main features, especially the global nature of the store and the communication mechanism, are impediments to distributed implementation. We think it to be necessary to introduce some new features in CC languages to build up a language suitable for distributed programming. We first discuss the solutions previously studied within the Logic Programming framework. Then, we propose the introduction of an asynchronous message-based communication mechanism. It smoothly integrates within CC, constraints allowing for a logical formulation of message-based communication, and induces notions of local computation, local store, and site.