We propose and evaluate an admission control paradigm for RTDBS, in which a transaction is submitted to the system as a pair of processes: a primary task, and a recovery block. The execution requirements of the primary task are not known a priori, whereas those of the recovery block are known a priori. Upon the submission of a transaction, an Admission Control Mechanism is employed to decide whether to admit or reject that transaction. Once admitted, a transaction is guaranteed to nish executing before its deadline. A transaction is considered to have nished executing if exactly one of two things occur: Either its primary task is completed (successful commitment), or its recovery block is completed (safe termination). Committed transactions bring a pro t to the system, whereas a terminated transaction brings no pro t. The goal of the admission control and scheduling protocols (e.g., concurrency control, I/O scheduling, memory management) employed in the system is to maximize system pr...