Abstract

Performance Aware Software Development (PASD) considers performance issues and information from the earliest stages of development. PASD includes techniques for generating the information, including performance estimates, and techniques for guiding and coordinating the effort for development. The present work uses executions-demand budgets (also known as “real-time budgets”) as a coordinating mechanism. Within an early architecture definition based on Use Case Maps (UCMs), demand budgets are allocated to responsibilities and verified by a semi-automated performance analysis using layered queuing models. The responsibility of the individual developer or group is simply to meet this budget, which can be tracked with unit tests of the code using widely available tools such as profilers. Budget changes are developed and verified at the overall architecture level, with the help of the performance model. The paper describes how the model is built and used. The key step is to add “completions” to the model, representing those parts of the system not defined in the software specification (such as COTS components, infrastructure such as middleware, the environment, and competing applications), which could impact the performance.

-- Jason Kealey - 12 Oct 2005

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