CORBA for hard real time applications: some critical issues

Among middleware that support heterogeneous distributed computing, OMG's CORBA, as a unified object oriented architecture to unify WWW, Internet computing with Java, embedding messaging, database connectivities, has been gaining ever increasing popularity and acceptance. As CORBA proliferates into industry, one of questions that was often heard is how well it supports real time applications, particularly hard real time applications. In this paper, we attempt to answer this question by systematically analyzing the each component of the CORBA architecture and pinpointing some critical issues raised in the real-time setting. This investigation consider both the CORBA architecture and the underlying infrastructure supports. The issues discussed are concerned with real time ORB and real-time interfaces, underlying real time communication protocols, real time application interoperability, time base and object services for real time. We hope that this investigation will contribute to the the intensive effort for Real Time CORBA, currently under way within the OMG.