A runtime performance analysis for web service-based applications

Abstract

Runtime performance evaluation is necessary for the continuous QoS (Quality of Service) management of Web service-based applications. The analysis is critical in service provisioning since it allows to detect QoS degradation and to identify its source. However, performance analysis in current applications is usually based on QoS reference values that are manually instrumented and pre-established independently from the execution context. It is inflexible to change. The paper extends our previous research on performance evaluation within a self-healing framework and proposes a novel analysis approach based on automatic generation of QoS reference values. These QoS reference values are generated whenever we start the application execution in a new context. This approach enables the detection of QoS degradation, the identification of its nature (like execution or communication level) and the localization of its cause (as scalability issue, node failure or network overload). The carried out experiments show that the dynamic generated QoS reference values are suitable and their associated analysis results are accurate. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.