Proto for Boost mailing list page: Re: [proto] Streamulus v0.1 is out: An EDSL for Event Stream Processing with C++

Subject: Re: [proto] Streamulus v0.1 is out: An EDSL for Event Stream Processing with C++
From: Eric Niebler (eric_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-06-24 17:24:10

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On 6/24/2012 8:50 AM, Irit Katriel wrote:
> 
> On 24 Jun 2012, at 03:47, Dave Abrahams wrote:
>> 
>> Well, I think the hello world example is too simple to illustrate
>> what this does, and the blog posting is TL;DR, but I skimmed it,
>> and still didn't really have a clue.  Have you looked at 
>> http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_49_0/doc/html/accumulators.html?
>> It seems to have some overlap with the problems you're solving.
>> 
> 
> I was not aware of accumulators, and I agree that there is some 
> overlap. As far as I can tell, the main differences are as follows.
> Please correct me if I misunderstood anything.
> 
> In the accumulators library, all the accumulators are invoked for
> every update to the input. This is why the visitation order can be
> determined at compile time.

That's correct.

> I am building a dependency graph that is used at runtime to
> determine which nodes need to be activated, so that inputs only
> propagate through the part of the expression that may be affected. 
> Obviously I am imagining large expressions on many inputs, so that
> this is worthwhile doing.

Very interesting! So ... data flow? Or does this take inspiration from
stream databases?

> In addition, I am trying to achieve a more programming-like syntax
> for complex expressions, by making the expression (rather than the 
> accumulator type) encode the dependencies between nodes.

Since accumulators is solving a simpler problem, as DSL isn't needed
there. For the more general problem you're solving, I think a DSL
makes sense.

> Example: you want to compute f(g(x),h(x)) over a stream. With 
> streamulus you define each of the functions f,g,h, and when you 
> subscribe the expression f(g(x),h(x)), and only then, f learns that
> its inputs are the outputs of g and h. With accumulators you would
> need to define the accumulator f_of_g_and_h(), make it depend on g
> and h, give it a tag, and then add it to the accumulators list.
> 
> Similarly, with streamulus you can define your function f, and then
> use it multiple times within the same expression:  sqrt(sqrt(x)).
> This will build a graph with three nodes : (x--> sqrt-->sqrt) where
> x is an input node and the two sqrt's don't need to know or care
> about each other because a different instance was constructed for
> each node.
> 
> I'm sorry about the too-long blog post.. It mostly deals with the
> bad things that can happen if you DIY your stream computations. You
> can skip most of it and just look at the definition of the sample
> application in the beginning, and then the streamulus solution in
> the end.

Looks pretty interesting. Thanks for sharing.

- -- 
Eric Niebler
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com
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