DICE simulation: a tool for software performance assessment at the design stage

Abstract

In recent years, we have seen many performance fiascos in the deployment of new systems, such as the US health insurance web. This paper describes the functionality and architecture, as well as success stories, of a tool that helps address these types of issues. The tool allows assessing software designs regarding quality, in particular performance and reliability. Starting from a UML design with quality annotations, the tool applies model-transformation techniques to yield analyzable models. Such models are then leveraged by the tool to compute quality metrics. Finally, quality results, over the design, are presented to the engineer, in terms of the problem domain. Hence, the tool is an asset for the software engineer to evaluate system quality through software designs. While leveraging the Eclipse platform, the tool uses UML and the MARTE, DAM and DICE profiles for the system design and the quality modeling.