Coordination languages for parallel programming

TL;DR: This introductory paper presents a number of important concepts that form a context for classification and comparison of various coordination models and languages, and their applications, and reviews three models and their associated languages, representing three different approaches to coordination.

Abstract: A number of interesting models have been proposed and used to support coordination languages and systems. In this introductory paper, we first present a number of important concepts that form a context for classification and comparison of various coordination models and languages, and their applications. Next, we review three models and their associated languages, representing three different approaches to coordination. We illustrate the application of each model and language by using it to solve the classical dining philosophers problem. This paper ends with an overview of the rest of the papers that appear in this special issue.