Abstract: In the manufacturing industry downtime is very expensive, therefore most small and midsize factories are still managed using paper-based processes. The problem space is perfectly suited for a microservices approach: well-defined and locally encapsulated responsibilities, collaboration and loose coupling, rapid evolution of individual pieces. But how can we operate microservices such that they can deliver the resilience of paper? How can we leverage the locality of process data and benefit from high bandwidth and low latency communication in the Internet of Things?
This workshop explores the radical approach of deploying autonomous actor-like agents in a peer-to-peer network on the factory shop-floor, using event sourcing as the only means of communication and observation. We discuss the approach of a coordination-free totally ordered eventually consistent event log and its consequences on the programming model inspired by the time warp algorithm (Jefferson 1987). In particular we dive into the question of a formal description of legal event sequences to simplify the programmer’s life: it is not yet clear what is attainable in this regard.

Slides: [X]
Fish State Machine Sketches: [X]
filet-o-fish GitHub: [X]

The content in these slides was presented during the BehAPI 2019 Summer School in Leicester.