This is the ninth IEEE Computer Society symposium dealing with the rapidly expanding field of object-oriented real-time distributed computing (ORC) technology. The principal theme of ISORC is the use of the object-oriented computing paradigm, which has prevailed in many non-real-time applications in the past decade, in a wide variety of real-time applications. In the ISORC series, this paradigm emphasizes its spirit of openness where diverse views and new approaches to challenging issues can be freely discussed.