Performance Modeling of ASP.Net Web Service Applications: an industrial case study

During the last decade the gap between software modeling and performance modeling has been closing. For example, UML annotations have been developed to enable the transformation of UML software models to performance models, thereby making performance modeling more accessible. However, as of yet few of these tools are ready for industrial application. In this thesis we explorer the current state of performance modeling tooling, the selection of a performance modeling tool for industrial application is described and a performance modeling case study on one of ABB’s remote diagnostics systems (RDS) is presented. The case study shows the search for the best architectural alternative during a multimillion dollar redesign project of the ASP.Net web services based RDS backend. The performance model is integrated with a cost model to provide valuable decision support for the construction of an architectural roadmap. Despite our success we suggest that the stability of software performance modeling tooling and the semantic gap between performance modeling and software architecture concepts are major hurdles to widespread industrial adaptation. Future work may use the experiences recorded in this thesis to continue improvement of performance modeling processes and tools for industrial use.