Real-Time

An increasing amount of distributed real-time systems and other critical infrastructure now rely on Data Distribution Service (DDS) middleware for timely dissementation of data between system nodes. While DDS has been designed specifically for use in distributed real-time systems and exposes a number of QoS properties to programmers, DDS fails to lift time fully into the programming abstraction. The reason for this is simple: DDS cannot directly control the underlying network to ensure that messages always arrive to their destination on time.

Many present-day safety-critical or mission-critical military applications are deployed using intrinsically static architectures. Often these applications are real-time systems, where late responses may cause potentially catastrophic results. Static architectures allow system developers to certify with a high degree of confidence that their systems will provide correct functionality during operation, but a more adaptive approach could provide some clear benefits.