Handling non-periodic events in Real-Time Java Systems

Most real-time systems consist of a mixture of hard and soft real-time components. Hard real-time tasks are typically periodic, where as soft real-time tasks are usually non-periodic. The goal of real-time scheduling is to minimize of the response times of soft tasks while guaranteeing the periodic tasks' deadlines. This Chapter present the mechanisms provided by the Real-Time Specification for Java to help program this mix of hard and soft components. An approach where support is provided at the application level (user-land) is proposed and evaluated. APIs that unify the various approaches and permit their use by a non specialist are defined