Incorporating Performance Analysis in the Early Stages of Software Development Using Generative Programming Principles

The incorporation of performance analysis in the early stages of software development has proven to be an elusive goal. Since the appearance of Connie Smith’s seminal work on Software Performance Engineering (SPE) in 1990 [13], numerous approaches to and methodologies for linking design and performance analysis have been studied and developed, as can be seen in [16], [17], and [1]. Yet through all of this, industry is not applying SPE. This is due to the high overhead of creating performance models from design specifications by traditional means. A comprehensive approach using Generative Programming principles is proposed to solve this problem and remove a major obstacle in the implementation of the SPE methodology.