A component model for homogeneous implementation of reconfigurable service-based distributed real-time applications

Networked applications structured as a collection of interconnected services offer high flexibility. In this context, services arc functional parts that receive and send messages in a distributed environment. This structure is especially interesting for multimedia/video applications due to their natural mapping to a graph-based structure. In this paper, a component model for the implementation of services is provided. The goal is to obtain services developed with a homogeneous structure to case interoperability. The proposed component model (named iLaSer) defines the interfaces with other services in a way that both, data and quality of service (QoS) information is given for each service. Target applications are distributed environments where QoS Information is relevant to allow managing the execution of services in compliance with functional and non-functional requirements. This work is carried out in the context of the iLAND project where the communication middleware performs QoS-based service composition in a time-deterministic manner. Io show the feasibility of the approach, experimental results are provided with the implementation of a video application based on services that follow the proposed component model.