Systematic refinement of performance models for concurrent component-based systems

Abstract

Model-driven performance prediction methods require detailed design models to evaluate the performance of software systems during early development stages. However, the complexity of detailed prediction models and the semantic gap between modelled performance concerns and functional concerns prevents many developers to address performance. As a solution to this problem, systematic model refinements, called completions, hide low-level details from developers. Completions automatically integrate performance-relevant details into component-based architectures using model-to-model transformations. In such scenarios, conflicts between different completions are likely. Therefore, the application order of completions must be determined unambiguously in order to reduce such conflicts. Many existing approaches employ the concept of performance completions to include performance-relevant details to the prediction model. So far researcher only address the application of a single completion on an architectural model. The reduction of conflicting completions have not yet been considered. In this paper, we present a systematic approach to reduce and avoid conflicts between completions that are applied to the same model. The method presented in this paper is essential for the automated integration of completions in software performance engineering. Furthermore, we apply our approach to reduce conflicts of a set of completions based on design patterns for concurrent software systems. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.