Poker: Visual Instrumentation of Reactive Programs With Programmable Probes

Cloé Descheemaeker; Sam Van den Vonder; Thierry Renaux; Wolfgang De Meuter

doi:10.1145/3486605.3486785

Abstract

This paper presents Poker, a visual instrumentation platform for reactive programs. Similar to other platforms, Poker features a visual dashboard that allows the programmer to in- spect the flow of values through the reactive program. The novelty of Poker is that: (a) It features a canvas of so-called probes that can be dynamically wired into a running reactive program in order to instrument the running system. (b) In addition to focusing on the values flowing through the pro- gram, a probe can measure a particular property about the way these values flow through the instrumented program. (c) The set of probes is open because a probe is programmed in the same language as the instrumented program.

Poker is implemented for Stella, an experimental reactive programming language. The paper uses an application written in Stella to motivate the concepts provided by Poker. We show 4 different probes that help us understand the behaviour of the application and we measure the overhead of using Poker on the running application with some preliminary benchmarks.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	REBLS 2021: Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Reactive and Event-Based Languages and Systems, co-located with SPLASH 2021
Place of Publication	Chicago, IL, USA
Publisher	ACM
Pages	14-26
Number of pages	13
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450391085
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3486605.3486785
Publication status	Published - 17 Oct 2021
Event	REBLS 2021: 8th Workshop on Reactive and Event-based Languages & Systems - Swissotel Chicago, Chicago, United States Duration: 17 Oct 2021 → 22 Oct 2021 Conference number: 2021 https://2021.splashcon.org/home/rebls-2021

Workshop

Workshop	REBLS 2021: 8th Workshop on Reactive and Event-based Languages & Systems
Abbreviated title	REBLS
Country	United States
City	Chicago
Period	17/10/21 → 22/10/21
Internet address	https://2021.splashcon.org/home/rebls-2021

Keywords

Reactive Programming
Debugging
Instrumentation
Visual Programming
Actors
Reactors

Access to Document

10.1145/3486605.3486785

poker_author_manuscriptAccepted author manuscript, 1.95 MB

Cite this

Descheemaeker, C., Van den Vonder, S., Renaux, T., & De Meuter, W. (2021). Poker: Visual Instrumentation of Reactive Programs With Programmable Probes. In REBLS 2021: Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Reactive and Event-Based Languages and Systems, co-located with SPLASH 2021 (pp. 14-26). Chicago, IL, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3486605.3486785

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abstract = "This paper presents Poker, a visual instrumentation platform for reactive programs. Similar to other platforms, Poker features a visual dashboard that allows the programmer to in- spect the flow of values through the reactive program. The novelty of Poker is that: (a) It features a canvas of so-called probes that can be dynamically wired into a running reactive program in order to instrument the running system. (b) In addition to focusing on the values flowing through the pro- gram, a probe can measure a particular property about the way these values flow through the instrumented program. (c) The set of probes is open because a probe is programmed in the same language as the instrumented program.Poker is implemented for Stella, an experimental reactive programming language. The paper uses an application written in Stella to motivate the concepts provided by Poker. We show 4 different probes that help us understand the behaviour of the application and we measure the overhead of using Poker on the running application with some preliminary benchmarks.",

keywords = "Reactive Programming, Debugging, Instrumentation, Visual Programming, Actors, Reactors",

author = "Clo{\'e} Descheemaeker and {Van den Vonder}, Sam and Thierry Renaux and {De Meuter}, Wolfgang",

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Descheemaeker, C, Van den Vonder, S , Renaux, T & De Meuter, W 2021, Poker: Visual Instrumentation of Reactive Programs With Programmable Probes. in REBLS 2021: Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Reactive and Event-Based Languages and Systems, co-located with SPLASH 2021. ACM, Chicago, IL, USA, pp. 14-26, REBLS 2021: 8th Workshop on Reactive and Event-based Languages & Systems, Chicago, United States, 17/10/21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3486605.3486785

Poker: Visual Instrumentation of Reactive Programs With Programmable Probes. / Descheemaeker, Cloé; Van den Vonder, Sam ; Renaux, Thierry ; De Meuter, Wolfgang.

REBLS 2021: Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Reactive and Event-Based Languages and Systems, co-located with SPLASH 2021. Chicago, IL, USA : ACM, 2021. p. 14-26.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Meeting abstract (Book)

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T1 - Poker: Visual Instrumentation of Reactive Programs With Programmable Probes

AU - Descheemaeker, Cloé

AU - Van den Vonder, Sam

AU - Renaux, Thierry

AU - De Meuter, Wolfgang

PY - 2021/10/17

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AB - This paper presents Poker, a visual instrumentation platform for reactive programs. Similar to other platforms, Poker features a visual dashboard that allows the programmer to in- spect the flow of values through the reactive program. The novelty of Poker is that: (a) It features a canvas of so-called probes that can be dynamically wired into a running reactive program in order to instrument the running system. (b) In addition to focusing on the values flowing through the pro- gram, a probe can measure a particular property about the way these values flow through the instrumented program. (c) The set of probes is open because a probe is programmed in the same language as the instrumented program.Poker is implemented for Stella, an experimental reactive programming language. The paper uses an application written in Stella to motivate the concepts provided by Poker. We show 4 different probes that help us understand the behaviour of the application and we measure the overhead of using Poker on the running application with some preliminary benchmarks.

KW - Reactive Programming

KW - Debugging

KW - Instrumentation

KW - Visual Programming

KW - Actors

KW - Reactors

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PB - ACM

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