Scheduling Processes Without Sudden Termination

Dynamic controllability is the most general criterion to guarantee that a process can be executed without time failures. However, it admits schedules with an undesirable property: starting an activity without knowing its deadline. We analyze the specific constellations of temporal constraints causing such a sudden termination. Consequently, we introduce the somewhat stricter notion of semi-dynamic controllability, and present necessary and sufficient conditions to guarantee that a process can be executed without time failures and without sudden termination. A sound and complete algorithm for checking whether a process is semi-dynamically controllable complements the approach.