Extending model transformations in the performance domain with a node modeling library

We introduce a new methodology that employs an architecture framework that can be used to automatically generate simulation models based on the UML model diagrams created by requirements engineers and software system architects. The framework takes advantage of a library of node models already specified by expert performance engineers. We envision that requirements engineers and architects will be able to generate optimized performance models using this approach by annotating UML deployment diagrams and sequence diagram models with performance requirements. In addition, they would be able to generate optimized simulation models by putting together existing simulation nodes. We report on our experience using our methodology to do a performance analysis of a large e-commerce application employing two different load balancing algorithms for the e-commerce application server. We have found that generating the simulation model using our approach was very efficient because requirements engineers and architects did not have to worry about the details of the simulation nodes implementation, which were developed by performance engineers. Therefore, they could focus their work on the UML diagram models that were related to their own domain of expertise.