A Fault-Tolerant Real-Time CORBA Naming Service Navy SBIR FY2005.2 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2005.2 Topic No.: N05-123 Topic Title: A Fault-Tolerant Real-Time CORBA Naming Service Proposal No.: N052-123-0612 Firm: Objective Interface Systems, Inc. 13873 Park Center Road Suite 360 Herndon, Virginia 20171-3247 Contact: Victor Giddings Phone: (703) 295-6500 Web Site: www.ois.com Abstract: There is a natural tension between real-time predictability and fault-tolerance capabilities in computing systems. There is a need for both real-time predictability and fault-tolerance in defense systems; they must timely deliver the required functionality in the face of unexpected environments that deliver unpredictable events. As a result, the efficiency of defense systems is often compromised to allow the recovery from faults to be factored directly into the worst case execution time of operations in order to ensure real-time predictability. The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a widely adopted, effective infrastructure for defense systems. A specification for a real-time variant of CORBA is supported by a number of commercial and open source products. A specification for a fault-tolerant variant of CORBA has been developed that supports strong consistency between replicas of objects. Unfortunately, neither of these specifications address the concerns of the other, so that a CORBA specification that supports both fault-tolerance and real-time is not available. The CORBA Naming Service provides a tractable and well-understood application of CORBA suitable as a candidate for evaluating the practicality of the techniques identified in research that has been directed toward reconciling the tension between real-time and fault-tolerance. Benefits: Development of a fault-tolerant, real-time CORBA naming service to be used in mission-critical environments. Such a naming service is applicable not only to defense projects, but to a variety of mission-critical applications in the commercial world, including industrial process control, finance, medical technology, etc. Any domains which require predictable behavior as well as the benefits of fault-tolerance are candidates for this technology. Return