Re: is Ada dying?

[Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>]

"martin.m.dowie" wrote:

> <minyard@acm.org> wrote in message news:m3itdp5vi5.fsf@wf-rch.cirr.com...
> > "Martin Dowie" <martin.dowie@nospam.baesystems.com> writes:
>
> >
> > Real-time does NOT mean fast.  Real-time means guaranteed performance,
>
> Absolutely, but unfortunately, for the systems I'm interested in I need
> both! :-(

Some practictioners believe it is unfortunate that we include the word
"time" in real-time.  Often, time is not the central issue. Event-occurrence
relative to event-response is probably more important.  That is,  the
question
to ask is whether the system can respond to and handle an event before the
next
event occurs. While it is true that one can measure latency in some
fractional
time, the real concern is whether the system can trap the events, process
them, and
produce the necessary feedback and control information generated from
that processing so it can be incorporated in the processing of the next
event.
It is conventional  to measure this with microseconds, etc., but excessive
focus on time in real-time  concurrent processes may sometimes lead to
designs
that produce race conditions and other entertaining obscurities in
real-time systems.

Richard Riehle