White papers

Information about Argot and Colony

Argot Programmer's Guide 1.3.alpha

This is the updated version of the Argot Programmer's guide. It provides a good introduction to the theory behind Argot data encoding and programming with Argot. Now updated for Argot 1.3.alpha Download -> ArgotProgrammersGuide.pdf

Argot Programmer's Guide

This is the first version of the Argot Programmer's guide. It provides a good introduction to the theory behind Argot data encoding and programming with Argot. Now updated for Argot 1.2.1 Download -> ArgotProgrammersGuide.pdf

Argot White Paper

Argot is a new data format that uses techniques that are a departure from the methods used in data formats available today. Its self-describing nature has many positive implications for how we communicate information in files, web sites, messaging systems and service-oriented architectures. This white paper provides a base introduction to the technology and its application. It continues to explain the technical details of the Argot data format and how its flexibility is achieved. Download -> ArgotPaper.pdf

Creating Evolvable Programming Language

Human languages evolve over time in a way that allows the concepts of the environment to be expressed. The evolution is continuous and much like Darwin's evolutionary theories, only the most useful words continue to be used in life. Programming languages also evolve; however, while each new programming language may look similar to the last, it is for all practical purposes a new and incompatible dialect. This paper proposes a method that describes programming language source code in a way that facilitates the evolution in a similar way to that of human languages. We show that by using Argot there is many opportunities to integrate the requirements of different languages, data and systems. Download -> EvolvableLanguages.pdf

The Einet web site

As a test bed for features, the Einet web site demonstrates the flexibility which can be achieved from a Colony enabled system. Colony has allowed us to build a true N-tier system that is manageable, flexible and fast.

What's Gone Wrong with Distributed Computing?

by David Ryan. It doesn't matter if you call it a web service, client/server, service oriented architecture(SOA), remote procedure call, or one of a myriad of other names, distributed computing is difficult. There have been a number of attempts at delivering flexible systems over the years. It seems though, that no matter how hard we try, we can't get it right. Ethernet got it right for local networks, and it proliferated. Networked computing got it right with TCP/IP, and it has proliferated. When it comes to the top of the network stack we can't seem to find a good stable solution that just works.