Welcome to the Research/HOrc web

HOrc is a domain specific language for distributed/concurrent/parallel programs. HOrc is implemented in Haskell and differentiates from other such languages by the way it is closely intertwined with it: you can use HOrc programs straight from other Haskell programs and you can use existing Haskell code in your HOrc programs.

HOrc is based on (actually an almost straight implementation of) the Orc language, created by Misra and Cook at U. Texas. The HOrc project was started because, at that time, there was only a not very functional implementation of the Orc available. Also, it was written in Java, which made it difficult to integrate with Haskell - the language of choice here at U. Minho. Nowadays, the project seems to have found a new life -- there is a new web-site, commercial support and you can even try out the language online. If you are interested in HOrc we urge you to visit Orc's website and check out all their cool stuff.

What you can find on this website

• Introduction - HOrc is a simple, simple language - 3 functions and 3 combinators. The concepts involved? not so much... So instead of an ascetic API we provide a high-level overview of the language, complete with explanations of all the functions of the language.
• Documentation - Contains all the documents that have been written about HOrc at a higher technical level, plus to some other useful resources.
• Downloads - This is probably the reason you came here in the first place, right? You can find HOrc here, plus some of the stuff we have implemented on top of it - Distributed Hylomorphisms, the Map Reduce framework, Worflow Patterns, ...