A Model for a Flexible and Predictable Object-Oriented Real-Time System

The requirements on real-time systems are changing. Traditionally, reliability and predictability of, especially hard, real-time systems were the main requirements. This lead to systems that were stand-alone, embedded and static. Future real-time systems, but also current systems, still require reliability and predictability, but also distribution of the real-time system, integration with non real-time systems and the ability to dynamically change the components of the system at runtime. Traditional approaches to real-time system development have difficulties in addressing these additional requirements. Therefore, new ways of constructing real-time systems have to be explored. In this article, we develop a real-time object-oriented model that facilitates the requirements of flexibility without sacrificing the predictability, integration and dynamicity aspects