Real-time programming-in-the-large. The case of monitoring and control systems

The design of object-oriented real-time distributed systems is especially hard due to the fact that some issues (concerned with distribution) are dealt with too early in the system life-cycle, while others (concerned with strategy) are hard-coded as programming-in-the-small issues, and still others (concerned with time) are hidden inside the operating system kernel. We present a reference architecture for monitoring and control systems that addresses the first two of these issues. The architecture raises distribution, activation and timing to an explicit, programming-in-the-large level.