A UML-based quantitative framework for early prediction of resource usage and load in distributed real-time systems

This paper presents a quantitative framework for early prediction of resource usage and load in distributed real-time systems (DRTS). The prediction is based on an analysis of UML 2.0 sequence diagrams, augmented with timing information, to extract timed-control flow information. It is aimed at improving the early predictability of a DRTS by offering a systematic approach to predict, at the design phase, system behavior in each time instant during its execution. Since behavioral models such as sequence diagrams are available in early design phases of the software life cycle, the framework enables resource analysis at a stage when design decisions are still easy to change. Though we provide a general framework, we use network traffic as an example resource type to illustrate how the approach is applied. We also indicate how usage and load analysis of other types of resources (e.g., CPU and memory) can be performed in a similar fashion. A case study illustrates the feasibility of the approach.