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.