Construction of real-time systems requires careful consideration to the software architecture at all layers and interfaces. We propose to build a highly usable framework that combines state-of-the-art analytical methods available for real-time system design with widely used commercial approaches to software design. This integrated framework, called EasiStudioTM, shall integrate the modeling, analysis and realization (code generation) of performance critical, object oriented systems. EasiStudio will utilize UML stereotypes and tagged values and allow modeling of components and interfaces augmented with performance specifications. A catalogue facility will enable COTS and custom components/classes to be reused consistently. Using these models, users can generate code targeted towards a supplied library. The library will include standards-based messaging primitives and distributed resource sets for guaranteed and bounded performance. Both the code generation and library will be designed for popular languages and platforms thereby supporting a wide variety of projects. In addition, users will be able to do performance analysis and generate analysis reports characterizing the ability of the system to meet its deadlines. Integration with selected third-party tools will provide both high-level and low-level debugging support. EasiStudio will be scalable to support a large number of components and provide a visual, hierarchical organization facility. Benefits In U.S. defense systems, fly-by-wire avionics, process control, nuclear power control, automated manufacturing, air traffic control and medical systems, life-threatening situations can arise if failures occur due to the misuse of reusable object-oriented software. The EasiStudio framework will maintain, model and analyze the timing and reliability properties of software components and enable the disciplined development and reuse of object-oriented components in the design of such systems. Keywords Hierarchical visual design, Component catalog Object-Oriented Programming, Real-Time UML Timing & reliability analysis, Extensibility Automatic Code Generation, Openness
