"Data-centric to the max", the SPLICE architecture experience

Over the past 10 years, Thales Naval Nederland (TNN) has successfully applied a pure data-centric architecture called SPLICE in its naval Combat Management Systems This fielded architecture provides the essential non-functional properties as demanded in these mission-critical environments such as (real-time) performance, scalability, fault-tolerance and evolveability. Thales recently contributed this knowledge and experience in a joint submission regarding the OMG's Data Distribution Service (DDS) for Real-time systems. The SPLICE architecture is characterized by autonomous applications with minimal dependencies where function and interaction are clearly separated and SPLICE-agents act as real-time information brokers. SPLICE thus offers a normalized environment that is designed once for all applications and which delivers 'the right information at the right place at the right time'.