Object-based Software Components for Smart Weapon Applications

A viable component-ware technology infrastructure is starting to emerge industry-wide. The basis of this infrastructure is a critical mass of the leading platform vendors adopting an object-based distributed computing specification: Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). We propose to advance current CORBA technology through the development of two key innovations: (1) run-time (dynamic) or compile-time (static) semantic-based composition and synthesis of reusable software components and (2) the ability to replicate and manage critical software elements). The Reliable Object Management Service (ROMS) will enable the deployment of fault-tolerant services based on object replication and management. Critical operations will be able to continue in a gracefully degraded fashion if any one copy of a system element fails. The long-range goal of this proposed work is to overcome barriers to building and deploying systems from verified, reusable software components. Reusable component-ware will result in significant reductions in the cost of system testing and requirements validation for mission-critical systems.