Publications

Filipe Valpereiro, Luis Miguel Pinho
Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies Ada-Europe 2006, Porto, Portugal
June 2006 [pdf]

Traditional Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) are not designed to accommodate application specific requirements. They address a general case and the application must co-exist with any limitations imposed by such design. For modern real-time applications this limits the quality of services offered to the end-user. Research in this field has shown that it is possible to develop dynamic systems where adaptation is the key for success. However, adaptation requires full knowledge of the system state. To overcome this we propose a framework to gather data, and interact with the operating system, extending the traditional POSIX trace model with a partial reflective model. Such combination still preserves the trace mechanism semantics while creating a powerful platform to develop new dynamic systems, with little impact in the system and avoiding complex changes in the kernel source code.

Luis Nogueira, Ricardo Barbosa, Luis Miguel Pinho
Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies Ada-Europe 2005, pp. 25 - 38, York, England
June 2005 [pdf]

In this paper we present a framework for managing QoS-aware applications in a dynamic, ad-hoc, distributed environment. This framework considers an available set of wireless/mobile and fixed nodes, which may temporally form groups in order to process a set of related services, and wherethere is the need to support different levels of service and different combinations of quality requirements. This framework is being developed both for testing and validating an approach, based on multidimensional QoS properties, which provides service negotiation and proposal evaluation algorithms, and for assessing the suitability of the Ada language to be used in the context of dynamic, QoS-aware systems.

Ricardo Barbosa, Luis Miguel Pinho
Proceedings of the WIP Session of the 16th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems, Catania, Italy, pp. 21-24
July 2004 [pdf]

Monitoring is a very important aspect to consider when developing real-time systems. However, it is also important to consider the impact of the monitoring mechanisms in the actual application. The use of Reflection can provide a clear separation between the real-time application and the implemented monitoring mechanisms, which can be introduced (reflected) into the underlying system without changing the actual application part of the code. Nevertheless, controlling the monitoring system itself is still a topic of research. The monitoring mechanisms must contain knowledge about "how to get the information out". Therefore, this paper presents the ongoing work to define a suitable strategy for monitoring real-time systems through the use of Reflection.

Ricardo Maia, Francisco Moreira, Ricardo Barbosa, Diamantino Costa, Patricia Rodriguez, Kjeld Hjortnaes, Luis Miguel Pinho
ACM Ada Letters, Volume XXIII, Number 4, Dec 2003, pp. 70-77
December 2003 [abstract]

Luis Miguel Pinho, Francisco Vasques
7th International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies - Ada-Europe 2002, Vienna, Austria, June, 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, nº 2361, Springer, pp. 297-308.
June 2002 [abstract]

This paper proposes an environment intended for the development of fault-tolerant real-time Ada 95 applications conforming to the Ravenscar profile. This environment is based on the transparent replication of application components, and it provides a set of generic task interaction objects, which are used as the basic building blocks of the supported applications. These objects provide the usual task interaction mechanisms used in hard real-time applications, and allow applications to be developed without considering replication and distribution issues.

Luis Miguel Pinho, Francisco Vasques
ACM Ada Letters, Vol 19, No 4, December 1999, pp 37-43.
December 1999 [pdf]

Ada is really an unfortunate Lady. After years fighting against C/C++ villains, her major lift-up (Ada 95) had brought up a promise of fortune. However, a new strong villain (Java) has appeared trying to end her struggle for approval. Ada has now to fight with its own weapons. She will only succeed by her own merit. But the question is, do they exist? Are they fitted to Real-Time Systems? We think that they do exist, and that they are more than suitable to Real-Time Systems programming.