Resource-aware real-time CORBA in multi-server distributed environment

Abstract

The emerging distributed applications require end-to-end support for various quality-of-service (QoS) aspects, including bandwidth, latency, jitter, and dependability. The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is an open distributed object computing infrastructure, standardized by the Object Management Group (OMG). Its goal is to minimize the effort required to develop high-quality systems by composing applications using reusable software components. However, CORBA is not sufficient to provide QoS guarantees in a distributed environment as it lacks capabilities to specify and enforce QoS constraints. For enforcing these constraints, OMG came up with Real-Time CORBA (RTCORBA) specification that can guarantee end-to-end predictability in a complex real-time system. Currently, RTCORBA specification addresses the location transparency, but does not address the resource monitoring and management issues critical for meeting the QoS constraints in a multiserver distributed processing environment. In this paper, we identify the functionalities that are required to ensure predictability in such an environment and propose a resource management framework for RTCORBA. We present its design, a prototype implementation using ORBit ORB, and an example to illustrate its use.