Applying System Execution Modeling Tools to Evaluate Enterprise Distributed Real-time and Embedded System QoS

Component middleware is popular for enterprise distributed systems because it provides effective reuse of the core intellectual property (i.e., the "business logic"). Component-based enterprise distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems, however, incur new integration problems associated with component configuration and deployment. New research is therefore needed to minimize the gap between the development and deployment/configuration of components, so that deployment and configuration strategies can be evaluated well before system integration. This paper uses an industrial case study from the domain of shipboard computing to show how system execution modeling tools can provide software and system engineers with quantitative estimates of system bottlenecks and performance characteristics to help evaluate the performance of component-based enterprise DRE systems and reduce time/effort in the integration phase. The results from our case study show the benefits of system execution modeling tools and pinpoint where more work is needed