McObject Announces Immediate Availability of eXtremeDB/rt for FreeRTOS
Press ReleaseNovember 03, 2021
Federal Way, WA – November 3, 2021- McObject, an innovative pioneer in embedded database systems, today announced the immediate availability of McObject’s revolutionary eXtremeDB/rt database management system (DBMS) for FreeRTOS-based real-time embedded systems.
eXtremeDB/rt is the first hard-real-time database system for mission- and safety-critical real-time systems. Real-time, in this context, means that eXtremeDB/rt enforces transaction deadlines and thereby maintains temporal consistency of the data while maintaining internal consistency through the well-known ACID properties. eXtremeDB/rt is built on the foundation and solid reputation of eXtremeDB, the first in-memory embedded database system written explicitly for embedded systems, released in 2001 and now found in over 30,000,000 deployments worldwide.
As an in-memory database system, eXtremeDB is of course very fast. But fast is not the same as real-time. In non-real-time database systems, calls to the database are not interruptible. In real-time systems, a long-running database operation could cause the task to exceed its deadline. In contrast, eXtremeDB/rt continually checks itself against the transaction deadline, interrupts the operation, and returns control to the application with a status to indicate the transaction must be aborted to meet its deadline. In other words, in a real-time database system, a transaction can “meet” its deadline (complete on time), “miss” its deadline (abort within the deadline), but can never be “late” (exceed its deadline).
eXtremeDB/rt delivers real-time capability through adaptable transaction managers that developers can choose from to match workloads. The High Priority Earliest Deadline First transaction manager is the workhorse, while the more nuanced Priority Inheritance transaction manager can be a superior choice when a mixture of non-database- and database-related tasks execute concurrently.
“From the beginning, we envisioned a hard real-time version of eXtremeDB and engineered it to be able to support this capability. We’ve watched while the real-time systems market has evolved along the same trajectory as the embedded systems that inspired us to create eXtremeDB: The systems need to manage more, and more complex, data” said Andrei Gorine, CTO of McObject. “This is being borne out in sophisticated systems such as autonomous air, ground and space vehicles, positive train control, power distribution/energy management systems and more. As the most-adopted real-time operating system, availability of eXtremeDB/rt on FreeRTOS is a top priority.”
Richard Barry, FreeRTOS founder, said “It is good to have another high-quality option for FreeRTOS users, this time providing a real-time deterministic database which can, as just one example, fulfill a crucial role in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT): data collection, aggregation, and distribution in oil rig blow-out prevention (BOP) systems. A BOP is a specialized device equipped with sensors to detect a “kick” and actuate valves to prevent a catastrophic blowout.” Richard continued, “The need to detect and respond within deadlines is emblematic of real-time industrial systems.”
