The Unified Modelling Language and performance engineering

The use of performance analysis and prediction techniques by software designers and software engineers is at best inconsistent and at worst simply does not happen. This is principally because these techniques are seen as separate and difficult to apply. Work on software performance engineering, initiated by C.U. Smith (1990), has sought to bridge the gap but has had limited success. With the emergence of a widely accepted standard for software design, the Unified Modelling Language (UML), the time seems ripe for an attempt to integrate performance directly into this process, by exploiting the notation directly. The paper reviews past work in software performance engineering, summarises UML and presents encouraging results from merging these two techniques