Collaborative IV&V by SPEED: a tool-kit for the performance IV&V of critical software

Software performance engineering is a software engineering methodology whose scope is continuing performance IV&V during the life cycle. SPEED (Software Performance Evaluation and Modeling) is a toolkit for software performance IV&V according to performance engineering criteria. It is in course of development at the Laboratory for Computer Science, and CERTIA Research Center University of Rome at TorVergata. In its present version, it generates and evaluates the Master Model of the product, a performance analysis model that continuously evolves with the product design, and that includes the software workload model and the abstract machine model, or model of the executing environment. Conventional analytical and hybrid simulation techniques can then be applied to the MM to obtain performance predictions for the product under design. The paper gives a description of the SPEED philosophy and architecture, with an accompanying application example of DBMS performance design.