| dc.description.abstract | Middleware is increasingly being used to develop and deploy large-scale distributed
real-time and embedded (DRE) systems in domains ranging from avionics to industrial
process control and financial services. Applications in these DRE systems require
various levels and types of quality of service (QoS) from the middleware, and often run
on heterogeneous hardware, network, OS, and compiler platforms. To support a wide
range of DRE systems with diverse QoS needs, middleware often provides many (i.e.,
10’s-100’s) of options and configuration parameters that enable it to be customized
and tuned for different use cases. Supporting this level of flexibility, however, can
significantly complicate middleware and hence application QoS. This problem is exacerbated
for developers of DRE systems, who must understand precisely how various
configuration options affect system performance on their target platforms.
This thesis provides two contributions to R&D on model-driven development
(MDD) techniques that help codify the impact of middleware configurations on endto-
end distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) system quality of service (QoS).
First, we describe how MDD techniques can help select middleware configuration
parameters that satisfy key functional and QoS requirements of DRE systems. Second,
we apply our MDD techniques to empirically evaluate the end-to-end QoS of
representative DRE systems in the avionics and industrial manufacturing domains.
Our results show how MDD techniques significantly enhance conventional ad hoc processes
used by developers to configure middleware that meets the QoS needs of DRE
systems. | |
