Model Driven Middleware: A New Paradigm for Developing and Provisioning Distributed Real-time and Embedded Applications ?

Distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) applications have become critical in domains such as avionics (e.g., flight mission computers), telecommunications (e.g., wireless phone services), tele-medicine (e.g., robotic surgery), and defense applications (e.g., total ship computing environments). DRE applications are increasingly composed of multiple systems that are interconnected via wireless and wireline networks to form systems of systems. A challenging requirement for DRE applications involves supporting a diverse set of quality of service (QoS) properties, such as predictable latency/jitter, throughput guarantees, scalability, 24x7 availability, dependability, and security that must be satisfied simultaneously in real-time. Although a growing number of DRE applications are based on QoS-enabled commercial-off-theshelf (COTS) hardware and software components, the complexity of managing long lifecycles (often ∼15-30 years) remains a key challenge for DRE application developers. For example, substantial time and effort is spent retrofitting DRE applications when their COTS technology infrastructure changes. This paper provides three contributions to improving the development and validation of DRE applications throughout their lifecycles. First, we illustrate the challenges in developing and deploying QoS-enabled component middleware-based DRE applications and outline our solution approach to resolve these challenges. Second, we describe a new software paradigm called Model Driven Middleware (MDM) that combines model-based software development techniques with QoS-enabled component middleware to address key challenges faced by developers of DRE applications particularly composition, integration, and assured QoS for end-to-end operations. Finally, we describe our progress on a MDM tool-chain, called CoSMIC that addresses key DRE application and middleware lifecycle challenges, including developing component functionality, partitioning the components to use distributed resources effectively, validating the software, assuring multiple simultaneous QoS Preprint submitted to Science of Computer Programming 14 November 2003 properties in real-time, and safeguarding against rapidly changing technology.