Middleware performance: a quantitative modelling approach
Marcel Harkema, B.M.M. Gijsen, R.D. van der Mei, Y. Hoekstra · VU Research Portal · 2004
Middleware is software that manages interactions between applications distributed across a heterogeneous computing environment. Middleware technology is often used to implement E-business applications on the Internet. Performance problems in these distributed E-business applications can lead to customer churn, and thus loss of revenue. This raises the critical need for service providers to be able to predict and control performance. Motivated by this, in this paper we develop a quantitative performance model of CORBA-based middleware. CORBA is the de-facto standard for object middleware, providing RPC-like interactions between objects. We have implemented the performance model in a simulation tool. To validate the model we have compared performance predictions from simulation runs with results from lab experiments for a variety of parameter settings. The results show that the model leads to accurate performance predictions, and moreover demonstrates that a quantitative modeling approach to assess and predict the performance of middleware-based applications is very promising.