Software Performance: state of the art and perspectives

In the last decade, several research efforts have been directed to integrating performance analysis in the software development process. Traditional software development methods focus on software correctness, introducing performance issues later in the development process. This approach is not adequate since performance problems may be so severe that they may require considerable changes in the design, for example at the software architecture level, or even worse in the requirements analysis. Several approaches have been proposed to address early software performance analysis. Although some of them have been successfully applied, there is still a gap to be filled in order to see performance analysis integrated in ordinary software development. We present a comprehensive review of the recent developments of software performance research and point out the most promising research directions in the field.