Apparatus for supporting graphic data driven program development and for displaying instruction execution results superimposed on the graphic program

An apparatus for supporting development of graphic data driven programs comprising:

• a terminal device for inputting a data driven program described in graphic form for displaying said inputted data driven program on a display device;
• input transforming means coupled to said terminal device for preparing an intermediate file including information including an instruction number for identifying an instruction from said data driven program for every instruction, a shape and position coordinates of graphic symbols and line segments representing said instruction displayed on said display device, input and output data of said instruction, numbers of input and output data sets of said instruction, and wiring indicating a flow of tokens between different instructions,
• wiring table transforming means coupled to said input transforming means for transforming said inputted data driven program into a wiring table of instructions expressed in text by using said information stored in said intermediate file;
• compile means coupled to said wiring table transforming means for transforming said wiring table of instructions expressed in text into instruction templates described in an already existing language;
• instruction executing means coupled to said compile means for executing said instruction templates obtained from said compile means such that each of the instructions corresponding to said instruction templates is not executed until all input data necessary for executing each of said instructions is available;
• instruction execution displaying means coupled to said instruction executing means for receiving the instruction number of an executed instruction every time an instruction is executed from said instruction executing means, obtaining from said intermediate file position coordinates and the shape of segments indicating a flow of instructions and tokens from said instruction number, and displaying on said display device the fact that said instruction has been executed and that a token has been outputted to a flow of output tokens of said instruction;
• and
• instruction information tracing means coupled to said instruction executing means for receiving the instruction number of an executed instruction and trace information of input and output data from said instruction executing means every time an instruction is executed, storing said trace information, and displaying the stored trace information on said display device in response to an instruction from said terminal device;
• wherein the instruction templates include input data arrival counters;
• and
• wherein the instruction executing means includes
• means for setting the input data arrival counters to predetermined initial values each representing a number of input data which are necessary for executing a respective one of the instructions,
• means for determining if one of the instructions is registered in a waiting queue as being ready for execution,
• means for executing, when it is determined that one of the instructions is registered in the waiting queue, a calculation indicated by the instruction template of the registered instruction based on input data for the registered instruction to obtain output data for the registered instruction,
• means for decrementing by one the input data arrival counter for one of the instructions succeeding the registered instruction which is to receive as input data the output data for the registered instruction, and
• means for registering in the waiting queue the succeeding instruction when the input data arrival counter for the succeeding instruction has been decremented to a count value of zero.