Experimental Evaluation of a Hybrid Approach for Deriving Service-Time Bounds of Methods in Real-Time Distributed Computing Objects

Use of hybrid approaches that symbiotically combine analysis and measurements for deriving high-confidence tight service-time bounds (STBs) in real-time distributed computing (RTDC) applications represents a promising research area. A hybrid approach of this type was recently proposed for deriving STBs for methods in object-oriented RTDC applications. The approach combines analytical and measurement-based techniques to find a tight STB falling between the maximum measured service time and an analytically derived loose STB. A curve-fitting technique is applied to relate the measured data to the loose bound and also enables the estimation of the probability of the chosen STB not being exceeded at run time. Experimental research for checking the feasibility and potential problems of this type of hybrid approaches has been scarce. In this paper we report on the results of one case study aimed for validating the curve-fitting based hybrid approach mentioned above. The RTDC application dealt with in this experimental work is a relatively simple distributed video streaming application, called Televideo.