A Framework for Automated Generation of Architectural Feedback from Software Performance Analysis

A rather complex task in the performance analysis of software architectures has always been the interpretation of the analysis results and the generation of feedback that may help developers to improve their architecture with alternative "better performing" solutions. This is due, on one side, to the fact that performance analysis results may be rather complex to interpret (e.g., they are often collections of different indices) and, on the other side, to the problem of coupling the "right" architectural alternatives to results, that are the alternatives that allow to improve the performance by resolving critical issues in the architecture. In this paper we propose a framework to interpret the performance analysis results and to propose alternatives to developers to improve their architectural designs. The interpretation of results is based on the ability to automatically recognize performance anti-patterns in the software architecture. The whole process of result interpretation and generation of architectural alternatives is supported by a tool based on the Layered Queueing Network notation.