Performance modelling of interaction protocols for component-based system design using object-oriented simulation

European defence companies have used MASCOT methodology in weapon system projects for real-time embedded software development. This method has been used for at least twenty years and it is still their primary design and development method. On the other hand, the intersection of software engineering (SE) and performance engineering (PE) has made a new topic: Software performance engineering (SPE). This paper presents a performance component-based system design technique based on an extended MASCOT modelling method. The constituent interaction protocols are constructed in an object-orientation manner keeping the functional structure of the system design. The resulting quantitative model is evaluated through discrete-event simulation. The object-oriented simulation code eases the analysis tasks in order to submit the performance model to different time and capacity constraints. This research opens new ways of communication between the functional designer and the performance analyst. The paradigm of having performance models that can be extracted from MASCOT designs and merged with existing performance-modelling components give the capability of reusing the abstraction effort in the systems construction. The technique presented would be applicable to soft real-time system design.