Stan Schneider

Integration effort and risk grow dramatically with system and team size. Connecting large systems developed by independent teams at different times requires connecting multiple systems, thus creating a system of systems. Enterprise systems use a design called Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to effect this integration. However, the technologies used in the enterprise do not apply well to real-time systems; they cannot handle the strict delivery and timing requirements. So what IS Real-Time SOA?

Software costs a lot to develop, maintain, market and sell, but the incremental cost of providing this software to an additional customer is very low. Vendors need to cover the entire cost, but users want to pay that low incremental cost. This gap must somehow be bridged. Attempting to charge based on licenses, support or services results in flawed justifications. Charging based on the value of development seats, runtime royalties, or product creates weak rationales.

Today's embedded software applications are increasingly distributed; they communicate data between many computing nodes in a networked system. Several network middleware designs have arisen to meet the resulting communications need, including client-server, message passing, and publish-subscribe architectures.

The Rise of Data-Centric Programming The network is profoundly changing the nature of system design. The "web" is just a first step; the Internet today focuses on connecting people at human interaction speeds. Future networks will connect vast arrays of cooperating machines at rates meaningful to physical processes. These connections make truly distributed applications possible. Distributed applications will drive the future in many areas, from military information systems to financial trading to transportation.

Truly profound technologies become part of everyday life. Motors, plastics, computers, and now networking have made this transition in the last 100 years. These technologies are embedded in billions of devices; they have melted into the assumed background of the modern world.