MICRA: A Model for the Development of Mission Critical Applications
From Navigators
- Research Line(s): Timeliness and Adaptation in Dependable Systems (TADS)
- Sponsor: FCT
- Project Number: PRAXIS/P/EEI/12160/1998
- Total award amount: 39.5K Euros
- Coordinator: FCUL
- Partners: FCUL, DSG/UC
- Start Date: Sept. 1999
- Duration: 24 months
- Keywords: Real-Time Systems, Fault-Tolerant Systems, Distributed Systems, Timeliness constraints
- Team at FCUL: 2 researchers, including Paulo Verissimo, António Casimiro
The growth of networked and distributed systems in several application domains has been explosive in the past few years. This has changed the way we reason about distributed systems in many ways. One issue of definitive importance is the following: what model to use for large-scale interactive or mission-critical applications? The MICRA project intends to study, propose, and validate an adequate model to address this problem.
Aims
This project aims to investigate, in the first place, the steps needed for the definition of a new model suitable for mission-critical applications. The crucial aspect is timing fault-tolerance in the context of real-time systems. We intend to formalize assumptions about system timeliness, and then develop what we call a Timing Failure Detector, in order to perfectly detect all violations of timeliness. There are several ways to treat the problem afterwards, but we plan to study the use of replication to mask timing faults. Previously known failure detectors were of the crash type only, our detectors are more accurate. Besides, replication has not been used previously in the context of timing faults, and as such, this approach is innovative. Our research will therefore concentrate on the definition of a set of basic services (a Timing Failure Detection Service -- TFDS, and a Replica Management Service -- RMS) which aim at providing the functionality just described, by means of a suitable programming interface, with provisions for timeliness specifications.
Approach and Methods
The project is structured around three main lines of action: i) basic research in the area of synchrony models for distributed systems, including the work required for the definition of a generic model suitable for MICRA; ii) definition of middleware architecures and platforms to support the development of mission-critical applications, including the definition of a Timing Failure Detection service and an adaptation or replication service; iii) implementation of a small demonstration prototype to validate the model and the services.
Progress and Results
The definition a a generic system model, the Timely Computing Base model, has been successfully accomplished during the first project year. Also some development work has been done, with results published in international workshops.
Publications
- António Casimiro, Miguel Correia, “Recent Advances on the Timely Computing Base Model”, in Fast Abstract at the International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, Jan. 2002.
- António Casimiro, Pedro Martins, Paulo Verissimo, Luís Rodrigues, “Measuring Distributed Durations with Stable Errors”, in Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, London, UK, December 2001, Dec. 2001.
- António Casimiro, Paulo Verissimo, “Using the Timely Computing Base for Dependable QoS Adaptation”, in Proceedings of the 20th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, New Orleans, USA, October 2001, Oct. 2001.
- António Casimiro, Pedro Martins, Paulo Verissimo, “How to Build a Timely Computing Base using Real-Time Linux”, in in Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Workshop on Factory Communication Systems, Porto, Portugal, September 2000., Sept. 2000.
- Paulo Verissimo, António Casimiro, C. Fetzer, “The Timely Computing Base: Timely Actions in the Presence of Uncertain Timeliness”, in in Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, New York, USA, June 2000., Jun. 2000.
- António Casimiro, Paulo Verissimo, “Timing Failure Detection with a Timely Computing Base.”, Missing institution, Tech. Rep., Nov. 1999. Technical Report DI/FCUL TR-99-8, Department of Informatics, University of Lisboa, November 1999
- Paulo Verissimo, António Casimiro, “The Timely Computing Base”, Missing institution, Tech. Rep., May 1999. Technical Report DI/FCUL TR-99-2, Department of Informatics, University of Lisboa, May 1999
- António Casimiro, Paulo Verissimo, “Timing Failure Detection with a Timely Computing Base”, in 3rd European Research Seminar on Advances in Distributed Systems (ERSADS'99), Madeira Island, Portugal, April 23-28, 1999, Apr. 1999.
BibTeX
Navigators - MICRA project| Current projects: | VEDLIoT, SATO, ADMORPH, SEAL, AQUAMON, UPVN, REDBOOK, ThreatAdapt, SEL, Xivt |
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| Past projects: | TCLOUDS, MASSIF, MAFTIA, RESIST NoE, DiSIEM, KARYON, HIDENETS, CORTEX, CRUTIAL, TRONE, SITAN, ReD, IRCoC, DIVERSE, CloudFIT, READAPT, REGENESYS, RC-Clouds, TACID, DARIO, RITAS, AJECT, MICRA, DEAR-COTS, COPE, DEFEATS, MOOSCO, TOPCOM, RE:DY, NORTH, Abyss, SUPERCLOUD, COST Action IC1402, SEGRID, BioBankCloud, PROPHECY, SAPIENT, SecFuNet, FTH-Grid, AIR-II, AIR, ESFORS, CaberNet, GODC, BROADCAST, CoDiCom, Delta-4, RAPTOR |
