In search of commercial off-the-shelf, hard real-time, distributed object computing middleware

Numerous technical and life cycle cost consideration trends have led to a large increase in the use of commercial, off the shelf (COTS) computing and networking infrastructure in military command and control (C2) applications. Object oriented (OO) real-time middleware, such as RT CORBA, provides the capabilities required for domain specific services and applications. However, it is unproven whether such commercial technologies can achieve the hard real time performance required by many C2 system. Our study reveals that DOC middleware is suitable for some real-time applications when appropriately coupled with operating system and network protocol quality of service (QoS) mechanisms areas in which further progress is still needed.