An open environment for cooperative equational solving

We describe a system called CFLP which aims at the integration of the best features of functional logic programming (FLP), cooperative constraint solving (CCS), and distributed computing. FLP provides support for defining one’s own abstractions over a constraint domain in an easy and comfortable way, whereas CCS is employed to solve systems of mixed constraints by iterating specialized constraint solving methods in accordance with a well defined strategy. The system is a distributed implementation of a cooperative constraint functional logic programming scheme that combines higher-order lazy narrowing with cooperative constraint solving. The model takes advantage of the existence of several constraint solving resources located in a distributed environment (e. g., a network of computers), which communicate asynchronously via message passing. To increase the openness of the system, we are redesigning CFLP based on CORBA. We discuss some design and implementation issues of the system.