Performance evaluation of real-time locking protocols using a distributed software prototyping environment

The problem of priority scheduling in real-time database systems is addressed. A prototyping environment for investigating distributed software is presented. Specific priority-based real-time locking protocols are discussed, together with a performance study which illustrates the use of the prototyping environment for evaluation of synchronization protocols for real-time database systems. The priority ceiling protocol, which achieves a high degree of schedulability and system predictability, is investigated, and its performance is compared with that of other techniques and design choices. It is shown that this technique might be appropriate for real-time transaction scheduling since it is very stable over the wide range of transaction sizes, and compared with two-phase locking protocols, it reduces the number of deadline-missing transactions