START/ES: an expert system tool for system performance and reliability analysis

This paper describes START/ES, an expert system based tool for performance and reliability analysis of complex computer systems. START/ES provides an iconic system design capture interface, which allows direct manipulation of system design attributes and facilitates the exploration of a wide range of design alternatives. System design descriptions are automatically translated into mathematical models, which evaluate candidate designs in terms of both performance and reliability. Evaluation results can be analyzed by the automated reasoning component of the tool, which uses a rule-based approach to diagnose performance and reliability problems, and to recommend design changes for achieving system designs which are compliant with all requirements. Finally, the rule base is extensible and can be modified using START/ESʹs rule builder interface.