Workflow management for soft real-time interactive applications in virtualized environments

Abstract

Many applications, especially the ones implementing multi-user collaborative environments, fall within the context of soft real-time systems in which only small deviations from timing constraints are allowed. The advancements in distributed computing have made it possible to follow a service oriented approach, taking advantage of the benefits this provides. In this context, applications consist of soft real-time critical application service components that interact with each other to provide the corresponding application functionality, forming application workflows. In this paper we present a new architectural design and implementation of a Workflow Management approach. This approach covers enacting soft real-time application service components according to a workflow description language, synchronizing the application components, monitoring the execution and reacting to events within a distributed virtualized environment. We also demonstrate the operation of the implemented mechanism and evaluate its effectiveness using an application scenario with soft real-time interactivity characteristics, namely Film post-production, under realistic settings.