On the design of a dynamic distributed real-time environment

Development of distributed real-time applications requires tools and methods ranging from the design process down to the run-time system. This paper describes an approach towards an integrated object-oriented real-time environment, providing a new conceptual structuring method, distributed dynamic scheduling, and a real-time executive, based on a standard real-time operating system. TaskPairs are introduced as a method for structuring distributed object-oriented applications that consist of a mix of hard-, soft- and non-real-time jobs. From this language level structure the compiler and a run-time monitor create an abstract representation of the system´s objects, their dependencies, and their actual timing behaviour. Based on this information about the current system state the distributed resource management dynamically tries to construct a feasible schedule