Model-based performance instrumentation of distributed applications

Abstract

Problems such as inconsistent or erroneous instrumentation often plague applications whose source code is manually instrumented during the implementation phase. Integrating performance instrumentation capabilities into the Model Driven Software Development (MDSD) process would greatly assist software engineers who do not have detailed knowledge of source code instrumentation technologies. This paper presents an approach that offers instrumentation support to software designers and developers. A collection of instrumentation patterns is defined to represent typical instrumentation scenarios for distributed applications. A UML profile derived from these patterns is then used to annotate UML models. Based on suitable code generation templates, the annotated models are transformed into instrumented source code for different instrumentation APIs. A prototypical implementation, including an adaptation to Web services, was evaluated in a lab environment. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.