Which are the kind of applications/services/components where the Actors model (Scala, Erlang) is best suited for?

Question

Besides the benefits of this model over the shared-memory model, I'm just trying to understand where to apply it for higher levels use-cases.

Answer 1

As to Scala, Actors model fits most of the multi-threaded cases one can think about:

• Swing GUI application
• Web Applications (see Lift framework)
• Application Server in multicore environment:
  • Batch processing of requests/data
  • Background tracking tasks
  • Notifications & Scheduled tasks

Actors model makes design much clearer and greatly simplifies interprocess communication.

Answer 2

• OTP Framework : Provides really good framework for network based applications.

• Helps in making fault tolerant applications . (process restart using Supervisor's in OTP).

• Both Synchronous and Asynchronous modes of communication can be done using gen_server.

• Event based callbacks can be used using gen_event.

• State machine can be programmed easily using gen_fsm (In case you need to follow some states in your application).

• A process crash does not bring the whole application down. Only that particular process crashes.

• Functional programming language.

• A lot easier to program at binary level.

• Garbage collection.

• Native compilation option.

• Fair amount of good useful modules are available.

• Able to make good solid concurrent applications easily.

And lots more.... I really enjoyed working on some applications in erlang , making those in c/c++ would have been very difficult.