A Method for the Performance Analysis of Integrated Application Services - Simulating the Execution of Integrated Application Services

Most EAI tools facilitate the integration of several application services to implement a designed workflow process. The individual application systems are coordinated by a workflow-driven broker-server that integrates the system through web-service technologies such as SOAP and XML. This paper describes a performance-evaluation methodology that we have developed for the analysis of such integrated application services. Elements of the methodology include a method for the design and implementation of applicationtraffic models as UML sequence diagrams and the implementation of workflow-process models as UML activity diagrams. On this basis, we develop a set of OPNET process models to represent the functions of workflow-driven broker-servers. We also develop application-traffic and workflow-process node models that configure the OPNET broker-server models into simulated networks, provide the other components of the networks, and specify the flows of data and control. Such OPNET models allow us to simulate integrated services that are driven by workflow-process descriptions, vary the network architecture scenario, and evaluate the resulting overall performance. Applying the proposed methodology from the early stages of development of systems will help us to avoid later problems with performance. We also give an example of a simple case study of the methodology’s application.