Predictability and Consistency in Real-Time Database Systems

Introduction As our society becomes more integrated with computer technology, information processing for human activities necessitates computing that responds to requests in real-time rather than just with best-effort . Many computer systems are now used to monitor and control physical devices and large complex systems which must have predictable and timely behaviors. We call such systems real-time systems. Some real-time systems must maintain and manipulate data shared by many tasks; thus they need to have databases which can provide the services needed by real-time computations. Real-time database systems (RTDBS) have (at least some) transactions with explicit timing constraints, such as deadlines and temporal distances. RTDBS are becoming increasingly important in a wide range of applications, such as aerospace and weapon systems, computer-integrated manufacturing, robotics, nuclear power 510 Predictabilit