A project report submitted to the Faculty of Erlglncerlng, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science In Engineering Johannesburg 1993 / This Project Repolt r ''"lorts on the study of an approach to building integrated real-time software systems based on re-usable object-oriented components. The basis of the approach is the development of a a-layered structure of components, where each layer is built on the underlying layer of components, The lower layer of components consists of generic re-usable building blocks that may be re-used for building and integrating other real-time applications. The middle layer consists of components that are generic to the application domain, and the top layer consists of components that are specific to each application of that application domain. The Report includes researching and developing methods of communicating between these building blocks using an OSI/CMIP-conformant 'software highway" and in this regard particular attention is given to the formal and de facto industry standards. With this approach, it is argued that the application engineer can effectively build new applications using the re-usable components. This is demonstrated by reporting on the implementation of a large real-world Telecommunications Network Management application. The Project Report contains a critical analysis of the technical, organisational and project management issues of this Object-oriented component approach as compared to the traditional development approach. The Report concludes that despite certain technical and organisational concerns, the object-oriented approach does indeed yield several worthwhile benefits for developing real-time software systems. These benefits include genuine re-usability, and l"1proved productivity, testability and maintainability.