Using objects and actions to provide fault tolerance in distributed, real-time applications

An object-oriented model is developed for structuring distributed real-time applications. Atomic atoms (atomic transactions) and exception handling techniques are used to introduce fault tolerance. Additional techniques are then developed to permit application and device specific commit and abort processing. Objects can be replicated to increase their availability. The authors examine the reasons why some of the previous real-time object models are not suitable for active replication and why the model proposed represents an improvement. Realistic examples are used to illustrate the practical utility of the approach