Rule-Based Control of Decentralised Asynchronous SOA for Real-Time Applications

In this paper we consider the core issues that are inhibiting the application of general Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles to distributed real-time military environments. In particular, we propose a Distributed Real-Time Service Oriented Architecture (DRT-SOA) framework intended to overcome some of the problems that distributed SOA systems face in needing to exhibit verifiable deterministic behaviour. Although the time behaviour of asynchronous systems is inherently non-deterministic, such systems offer advantages in terms of extensibility, cost and utilisation. We show that DRT-SOA presents a framework where the sources of non-determinism can be supressed, making it suitable for certain classes of real-time system. We also show that decentralised execution of complex workflows is achievable using dynamic rule-based logic. We also present preliminary results demonstrating the architecture's ability to perform decentralised execution of workflow and to resolve deadline constrained tasks. We also present results of a sensitivity analysis showing that the architectural framework is able to scale in support of dynamic redeployment of workflow. This has application when needing to adapt to changing run-time needs in the case of self-healing.