% $Id: abstract.tex,v 1.9 2005/12/08 04:27:14 gokhale Exp $

\begin{abstract}

\iffalse
% This abstract was deemed trying to cover a very large space. So a
% newer version is attached below
The ever increasing societal demands on the quick availability of
newer and feature-rich but highly dependable network-centric services
imposes the need for these services to constructed by composition and
assembly of building blocks -- a capability made feasible by the
advances in model-driven development and component middleware systems.
R\&D in this area has focussed primarily on the deployment and
configuration of services.  This paper makes three contributions to
the performability (i.e., performance and dependability) analysis of
composable distributed systems.  First, we illustrate the use of
domain-specific modeling languages and model weavers that enable us to
model system compositions using middleware building blocks and to
enhance these models with performability attributes.  Second, we
demonstrate the use of generative tools that enable us to synthesize
metadata useful for performability validation via analytical,
simulation and empirical benchmarking tools.  Finally, we demonstrate
the framework capabilities for performability validation of a
middleware-based VPN control plane.
\fi

\iffalse

While the strengths of model driven development (MDD) for deployment
and configuration of composable distributed services have been well
researched, there is much less focus on using MDD for performability
analysis.  This paper provides significant contributions towards
applying MDD for performability analysis of composable services.  We
show how domain-specific modeling languages can be used to build
scalable performability models.  We illustrate our approach by
modeling a simple distributed application that is composed of the  
Acceptor, Connector and Reactor patterns-based middleware building
blocks.  Our model based generative tools are used for performability
analysis of this application under different performability
requirements, and systems deployment and configurations.  Our
experience using the model driven approach illustrates the viability
of the MDD approach to build larger frameworks for complex
performability analysis of large distributed systems. 
\fi

The increasing demand for faster availability of new, feature-rich and
high performance network-centric services imposes the need for these
services to be rapidly developed via composition, configuration and
assembly of standards middleware building blocks.  However, the
decisions on the systems compositions must be validated for
performance guarantees at design time, which is addressed in this
paper.  First, we describe the manual process in developing a
performance model for a middleware building block and illustrate the
challenges in scaling such models for large-scale compositions.
Second, we show how model-driven development (MDD) can play a key role
in addressing these scalability challenges.  We describe a MDD
performance evaluation framework we are developing.  Third, we
illustrate our framework's capabilities on a simple case study
demonstrating the viability of this approach.
\end{abstract}


{\bf Keywords: performance models, simulations, model-driven
  generative technologies.}

%%% Local Variables: 
%%% mode: latex
%%% TeX-master: "dsn_pds06"
%%% End: 
