Boston University's iBench Initiative
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Goal: The Internet Programming WorkBench (iBench) Initiative in the Computer Science Department of Boston University has as its central goal the development of a rigorous discipline for the specification, programming, and maintenance of distributed applications and services over the Internet.
Motivation: The recent metamorphosis of the Internet---from a mere best-effort transport medium to an open communication and computation infrastructure---necessitates the development of robust abstractions that facilitate its use to support a constantly increasing number of applications, in compliance with widely-accepted correctness standards that ensure a verifiably safe, fair, secure, and efficient access of Internet resources. Today, and to a large extent, programming distributed applications over the Internet suffers from the same lack of organizing principles as did programming of stand-alone computers some thirty years ago. Primeval programming languages were expressive but unwieldy; software engineering technology improved not only through better understanding of useful abstractions, but also by automating the process of verification of safety properties both at compile time (e.g., type checking) and run times (e.g., memory bound checks). We believe that the same kinds of improvements could find their way into the programming of distributed Internet services.
Approach: iBench takes the position that recognizing network flows as the central abstraction around which to develop a programming system for the Internet is perhaps the most important organizing principle. Specifically, to rapidly experiment with and deploy a wide range of new services within the existing constraints of the Internet infrastructure, it is necessary to adopt a more powerful model for the naming, creation, composition, sharing, and processing of Internet flows.
Sponsors: The iBench initiative is supported partially by a number of National Science Foundation grants, including Genericity in Network Software: Using Type Systems and Formal Methods to Harness Diverse Theories and Calculi for Scalable and Safe Compositions of Network Services (NSF CISE/CCF SRS Award #0820138), Leveraging Type Systems for the Development of High-Assurance Cyber-Physical Systems and Appications (NSF CISE/CSR EHS/CPS Award #0720604), and Internet Flows as First-Class Values: Support for Dynamic, Flexible Internet Services (NSF CISE/ANIR ITR Award #0205294).