Object-Oriented Structuring of Real-Time Autonomous Decentralized Systems

A promising cost-effective approach to realizing RT ADS's is to use the emerging technology for RT distributed component/object structuring. One such technology being explored by the author and his research collaborators is the the Time-Triggered MessageTriggered Object (TMO) structuring scheme [Kim94, Kim97b]. The TMO scheme is intended to facilitate RT distributed software engineering in a form which software engineers in the vast business software field can adapt to with small efforts. It is a syntactically simple and natural but semantically powerful extension of the conventional object structuring approaches. The scheme facilitates uniform structuring of (1) both RT and non-RT distributed application systems, (2) both control computer systems and their application environment simulators, and (3) requirement specifications and system designs arising at various phases of system engineering.