A method for design and performance modeling of client/server systems

Designing complex distributed client/server applications that meet performance requirements may prove extremely difficult in practice if software developers are not willing or do not have the time to help software performance analysts. The paper advocates the need to integrate both design and performance modeling activities so that one can help the other. We present a method developed and used by the authors in the design of a fairly large and complex client/server application. The method is based on a software performance engineering language developed by one of the authors. Use cases were developed and mapped to a performance modeling specification using the language. A compiler for the language generates an analytic performance model for the system. Service demand parameters at servers, storage boxes, and networks are derived by the compiler from the system specification. A detailed model of DBMS query optimizers allows the compiler to estimate the number of I/Os and CPU time for SQL statements. The paper concludes with some results of the application that prompted the development of the method and language.