The Project focuses on techniques, methodologies and tools for performance evaluation of complex systems. The activities are organized around five Work Packages (WP) that deal with complementary topics encompassing all the aspects of performance evaluation. Each WP spans over the entire duration of the Project.

The WP of the Project are the following:

• WP1: MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES AND WORKLOAD CHARACTERIZATION

• WP2: FORMALISMS AND MODELLING

• WP3: AUTOMATIC GENERATION OF PREDICTIVE AND VALIDATION MODELS

• WP4: SOLUTION TECHNIQUES

• WP5: SIMULATION

WP1 "Measurement techniques and workload characterization" deals with measurement of the performance of complex systems and methodologies for the characterization of their workload. The WP consists of two activities. The first activity deals with the study of measurement techniques with particular emphasis to the aspects related to their accuracy and representativeness. This topic will be addressed from methodological and application perspectives. The second activity, which is strictly related to the first one, is aimed at studying the static and dynamic characteristics of the workload and its properties, by applying a hierarchical approach. The methodologies proposed with this WP will be extensively experimented using , as a test bed, the systems and services provided with the Italian "Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri - Ufficio per l'Informatica, la Telematica e la Statistica". (Top)

WP2 "Formalisms and modelling" deals with the study of formalism and the incremental construction of performance models. This WP consists of two activities. The first activity is aimed at comparing different formalisms with respect to their ability to represent qualitative and quantitative properties of complex systems. This comparison will consider stochastic temporal logic, discrete phase type models for the representation of continuous non exponential distributions and colored Petri nets. The second activity is related to the study of formalisms and models able to represent and evaluate the Quality of Service (QoS) provided by distributed platforms. In particular, the activity will focus on modeling contracts based on Service Level Agreement.(Top)

WP3 "Automatic generation of predictive and validation models" deals with the automatic generation of performance models starting from a specification model described by a formal language. This WP consists of two activities. The first activity focuses on the validation of performance models from the perspective of the efficiency attributes. Particular emphasis will be put on the translation of annotated descriptions into generalized queueing networks, layered queueing networks and Petri nets. The activity will also study specifications of real-time processes and the characteristics of the current programming languages. The second activity deals with techniques for the evaluation of the dependability, with particular emphasis to formalisms such as fault trees, Bayesian networks and Petri nets.(Top)

WP4 "Solution techniques" deals with exact and approximate solution methods for the performance evaluation of time-dependent systems. This WP consists of three activities. The first activity is aimed at investigating the analytic techniques introduced in WP2 and WP3. In particular, it will focus on exact solution techniques, both in closed form or iterative, as well as approximate solutions. The second activity deals with models with deterministic timing, random non exponential timing and hybrid. These models will be based on the Petri net formalism and will include preemptive scheduling and solution methods relying on discretization methods. The third activity of this WP is related to the application of the exact and approximate solution methods developed with the first activity to study models able to characterize the Quality of Service (QoS) of mobile users accessing Internet through wireless networks.(Top)

WP5 "Simulation" deals with distributed simulation methodologies and simulation models for performance evaluation of complex systems. This WP consists of two activities. The first activity is related to the methodological aspects of the problem. The activity focuses on the study of architectures of distributed simulation and on the support services required to guarantee the correctness of the simulation and good performance. This activity will also deals with the design and implementation of platforms of distributed simulation. The second activity deals with the design and development of distributed simulation models for the analysis of the performance of the core network of the UMTS system and of Web systems characterized by local and remote replications.(Top)

For more information: perf at www.perf.it
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