Evaluation of real-time object-oriented data models for real-time databases

The design of real-time databases needs to incorporate methods specifically developed to represent the timing constraints of the system under consideration. Real-time databases have timing constraints on data and on transactions upon the data. During the last few years, several research approaches have been directed towards using the relational model as a data model for real-time databases. However, neither approach adds a temporal dimension to the data model. As realtime applications complexity grows, the real-time database community migrated towards object-oriented technology, both because one can use its rich data semantics in timing transactions processing and because complex real-time applications may benefit from its capabilities for modeling, storing and manipulating complex objects. In this paper we explore the realtime object-oriented data models for real-time databases, performing an overview of the existing models and presenting a set of features suitable to evaluate the quality of each model.