Patent ID: 7308674

Claim:
A system for implementing large-scale asynchronous token based distributed data-flow based applications comprising: a) a data-flow based scheduling environment for managing an execution of one or more control-flow based functional building blocks, or widgets, based on one or more rules of data flow enforced by said scheduling environment outside of said widgets; b) a visual programming environment, wherein said visual programming environment provides the ability to build and control a flow of data collections between said one or more widgets within said scheduling environment; c) a pin-based application programming interface that provides access to contents from an executing code within said one or more widgets through one or more widget input pins; and d) a strongly-typed run-time discoverable types system for defining types of said flow of data collections presented to said one or more widget input pins at run-time; wherein execution of said one or more widgets is triggered asynchronously by said flow of data collections arriving at said one or more widget input pins causing said one or more widgets to perform one or more actions in response to said flow of data collections arriving at said one or more widget input pins.