Measurement and Prediction of Software Performance by Models

Software Performance Engineering (SPE) provides a systematic, quantitative approach to constructing software systems that meet performance objectives. It prescribes ways to build performance into new systems rather than try to fix them later. Performance is a pervasive quality of software systems; everything affects it, from the software itself to all underlying layers, such as operating system, middleware, hardware, communication networks, etc. Software Perfor -mance Engineering encompasses efforts to describe and improve performance, with two distinct approaches: an early-cycle predictive model-based approach, and a late-cycle measurement-based approach. Current progress and future trends within these two approaches are described, with a tendency (and a need) for them to converge, in order to cover the entire development cycle.