Tutorial

Real-Time Java for Ada Programmers

Benjamin M. Brosgol, AdaCore
Monday June 20th, full day

Although the term "real-time Java" may sound self-contradictory, serious technical activity has been underway since early 1999 on extending the Java platform to satisfy the requirements for real-time systems, and several implementations exist. This work is relevant to the Ada community as both a challenge and an opportunity. On the one hand, it may compete with Ada in the real-time marketplace, but on the other hand some of its ideas may be worthy of consideration in a future version of the Ada language.

This tutorial will focus on the Real-Time Specification for Java ("RTSJ"), which was developed by the Real-Time for Java Expert Group under the auspices of Sun Microsystems' Java Community Process. The tutorial will analyze/critique the Java platform with respect to real-time support, summarize/illustrate the main elements of the RTSJ, and compare/contrast the design with Ada's real-time features (both in Ada 95 and under consideration for Ada 05). The tutorial will also outline the main aspects of the J-Consortium's "Core Extensions" (a competing real-time Java approach), will describe a proposed high-integrity profile for the RTSJ, and will provide a status update on the real-time Java work and its usage and prospects.

• Introduction
  • Requirements for real-time programming
  • Background and goals of real-time Java activities
  • Summary of Java thread model
  • Critique of Java platform for real-time support
• Pervasive technical issues
  • Priority inversion management
  • Garbage collection
  • Object Oriented Programming and real-time systems
• The Real-Time Specification for Java
  • Summary
  • Concurrency, scheduling and synchronization
  • Memory management
  • Asynchrony
  • Other features
  • Comparison with "Core Extensions" from the J-Consortium
  • Comparison with Ada
  • High-integrity profile
• Conclusions
  • Status of the definition and implementation of Real-Time Java
  • Assessment of Real-Time Java
  • What Ada can learn from Real-Time Java

Why should you attend this tutorial?

• You will learn the pros and cons of the Java thread model, both in general and for real-time applications
• You will see how real-time Java addresses the apparent "show stopper" problem of garbage collection
• You will be able to judge whether real-time requirements can be met by a "pure" Object-Oriented Language
• You will understand the effect of a dynamic and flexible scheduling approach, in terms of expressibility, predictability, and performance
• You will discover who is using real-time Java, and for what sorts of applications

Presenter

Dr. Brosgol has over 25 years of experience in the computer software industry, with a focus on programming languages, software development methods, and real-time systems. He was a primary member of the Real-Time for Java Expert Group and a co-author of the Real-Time Specification for Java. He is currently a member of the Technical Interpretations Committee for the RTSJ, and he has also served as a reviewer of the J-Consortium's Core Extensions. He has delivered Java tutorials and courses since 1997, and the proposed tutorial will be an up-to-date version of the "Real-Time Java for Ada Programmers" tutorial that he delivered at Ada Europe 2004 and SIGAda 2004.

Dr Brosgol is an internationally-recognized expert on Ada. He participated in both the initial language design and the Ada 95 revision, and he is a past chairman of the ACM's Special Interest Group on Ada (SIGAda). He has published numerous papers on Ada, has delivered presentations and tutorials at many Ada Europe and SIGAda conferences, and has been conducting courses on real-time programming in Ada since the late 1980s. He was an invited keynote speaker at the 2003 SIGAda conference, where his topic was "Ada and Real-Time Java: Cooperation, Competition, or Cohabitation?" He is a senior member of AdaCore's technical staff in the US, in the Boston area.

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