The Chimera Methodology: designing dynamically reconfigurable real-time software using port-based objects

The Chimera Methodology is a new software engineering paradigm which addresses the problem of developing dynamically reconfigurable and reusable real-time software. The foundation of the Chimera methodology is the port-based object model of a reusable software component. The model is obtained by applying the port-automaton formal computational model to object-based design. Global state variable table real-time communication is used to integrate port-based objects, which eliminates the need for writing and debugging glue code. The Chimera real-time operating system provides tools to support the software models defined by the Chimera methodology, so that real-time software can be executed predictably using common real-time scheduling algorithms. A hypermedia user interface has been designed to allow users to easily assemble the real-time software components that are designed based on the Chimera methodology. Use of the methodology can result in a significant decrease the development time and cost of real-time applications. The Chimera Methodology is a new software engineering paradigm for designing and implementing real-time software for multi-sensor systems. The Chimera name was used since this methodology was a direct result of our work on the Chi-mera real-time operating system project [28]. The methodology addresses the problem of developing dynamically reconfigurable component-based real-time software. Transfer and reuse of real-time software is difficult and often seemingly impossible due to the incompatibility between hardware and systems software at different sites. This has meant that new technology developed at one site must be reinvented at other sites, if in fact it can be incorporated at all. Technology transfer, therefore, has been a very expensive endeavor, and the reuse of software from previous applications has been virtually non-existent. The use of component-based software has been proposed to improve software development time by addressing the software reuse and technology transfer issues [26]. For example, a user developing a real-time application may need a specific software algorithm developed at some other site. Currently, users may go to the library or search through the network for keywords, then find a book or journal article describing the mathematical theory or computer science algorithm. After they have printed a copy of the paper, they read the article closely, then spend significant time writing, testing, and debugging code to implement the algorithm. Once that is done, they write more code to integrate the new algorithm into their existing system, and perform further testing and debug-ging. This process can easily take days or weeks of the …