CiCUTS: Combining System Execution Modeling Tools with Continuous Integration Environments

System execution modeling (SEM) tools provide an effective means to evaluate the quality of service (QoS) of enterprise distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems. SEM tools facilitate testing and resolving performance issues throughout the entire development life-cycle, rather than waiting until final system integration. SEM tools have not historically focused on effective testing. New techniques are therefore needed to help bridge the gap between the early integration capabilities of SEM tools and testing so developers can focus on resolving strategic integration and performance issues, as opposed to wrestling with tedious and error-prone low-level testing concerns. This paper provides two contributions to research on using SEM tools to address enterprise DRE system integration challenges. First, we evaluate several approaches for combining continuous integration environments with SEM tools and describe CiCUTS, which combines the CUTS SEM tool with the CruiseControl.NET continuous integration environment. Second, we present a case study that shows how CiCUTS helps reduce the time and effort required to manage and execute integration tests that evaluate QoS metrics for a representative DRE system from the domain of shipboard computing. The results of our case study show that CiCUTS helps developers and testers ensure the performance of an example enterprise DRE system is within its QoS specifications throughout development, instead of waiting until system integration time to evaluate QoS.