Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

European Workshop on Performance Engineering

EPEW 2016: Computer Performance Engineering pp 94–108Cite as

Towards Performance Tooling Interoperability: An Open Format for Representing Execution Traces

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9951))

Abstract

Execution traces capture information on a software system’s runtime behavior, including data on system-internal software control flows, performance, as well as request parameters and values. In research and industrial practice, execution traces serve as an important basis for model-based and measurement-based performance evaluation, e.g., for application performance monitoring (APM), extraction of descriptive and prescriptive models, as well as problem detection and diagnosis. A number of commercial and open-source APM tools that allow the capturing of execution traces within distributed software systems is available. However, each of the tools uses its own (proprietary) format, which means that each approach building on execution trace data is tool-specific.

In this paper, we propose the (OPEN.xtrace) format to enable data interoperability and exchange between APM tools and (SPE) approaches. Particularly, this enables SPE researchers to develop their approaches in a tool-agnostic and comparable manner. OPEN.xtrace is a community effort as part of the overall goal to increase interoperability of SPE/APM techniques and tools.

In addition to describing the OPEN.xtrace format and its tooling support, we evaluate OPEN.xtrace by comparing its modeling capabilities with the information that is available in leading APM tools.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.dmtf.org/standards.

  2. 2.

    http://www.oasis-open.org/standards.

  3. 3.

    http://www.omg.org/spec/.

  4. 4.

    http://www.w3.org/TR/.

  5. 5.

    http://opentracing.io/.

  6. 6.

    https://github.com/EsotericSoftware/kryo.

  7. 7.

    http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps3q05-20050217-Jaffe-OE.pdf.

References

  1. AppDynamics—Application Performance Monitoring and Management. https://www.appdynamics.com/

  2. CA—Application Performance Management. http://www.ca.com/us/products/ca-application-performance-management.html

  3. Dynatrace—Application Monitoring. http://www.dynatrace.com/en/application-monitoring/

  4. IBM—Application Performance Management. http://www.ibm.com/middleware/us-en/knowledge/it-service-management/application-performance-management.html

  5. Logging control in W3C httpd. https://www.w3.org/Daemon/User/Config/Logging.html

  6. New Relic APM. https://newrelic.com/application-monitoring

  7. Riverbed—Application Performance Monitoring. http://www.riverbed.com/de/products/steelcentral/application-performance-management.html

  8. Ammons, G., Ball, T., Larus, J.R.: Exploiting hardware performance counters with flow and context sensitive profiling. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 1997 Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI 1997), pp. 85–96 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Binz, T., Breitenbücher, U., Kopp, O., Leymann, F.: TOSCA: portable automated deployment and management of cloud applications. In: Advanced Web Services, pp. 527–549 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Brambilla, M., Cabot, J., Wimmer, M.: Model-Driven Software Engineering in Practice, 1st edn. Morgan & Claypool Publishers, Williston (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Brosig, F., Huber, N., Kounev, S.: Automated extraction of architecture-level performance models of distributed component-based systems. In: Proceedings of the 26th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2011), pp. 183–192 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Canfora, G., Penta, M.D., Cerulo, L.: Achievements and challenges in software reverse engineering. Commun. ACM 54(4), 142–151 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Ciancone, A., Drago, M.L., Filieri, A., Grassi, V., Koziolek, H., Mirandola, R.: The KlaperSuite framework for model-driven reliability analysis of component-based systems. Softw. Syst. Model. 13(4), 1269–1290 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Distributed Management Task Force: Common Information Model (CIM) Standard, February 2014. http://www.dmtf.org/standards/cim/

  15. Elarde, J.V., Brewster, G.B.: Performance analysis of application response measurement (ARM) version 2.0 measurement agent software implementations. In: Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Performance, Computing, and Communications Conference (IPCCC 2000), pp. 190–198 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Fittkau, F., Finke, S., Hasselbring, W., Waller, J.: Comparing trace visualizations for program comprehension through controlled experiments. In: Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC 2015), pp. 266–276 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Heger, C., van Hoorn, A., Okanović, D., Siegl, S., Wert, A.: Expert-guided automatic diagnosis of performance problems in enterprise applications. In: Proceedings of the 12th European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC 2016). IEEE (2016, to appear)

    Google Scholar 

  18. van Hoorn, A., Waller, J., Hasselbring, W.: Kieker: a framework for application performance monitoring and dynamic software analysis. In: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering (ICPE 2012), pp. 247–248 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Israr, T.A., Woodside, C.M., Franks, G.: Interaction tree algorithms to extract effective architecture and layered performance models from traces. J. Syst. Softw. 80(4), 474–492 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Jacob, B., Lanyon-Hogg, R., Nadgir, D., Yassin, A.: A Practical Guide to the IBM Autonomic Computing Toolkit. IBM, Indianapolis (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Kiciman, E., Fox, A.: Detecting application-level failures in component-based internet services. IEEE Trans. Neural Netw. 16(5), 1027–1041 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Knüpfer, A., Brendel, R., Brunst, H., Mix, H., Nagel, W.E.: Introducing the open trace format (OTF). In: Alexandrov, V.N., Albada, G.D., Sloot, P.M.A., Dongarra, J. (eds.) ICCS 2006. LNCS, vol. 3992, pp. 526–533. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  23. Kowall, J., Cappelli, W.: Magic quadrant for application performance monitoring (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Lladó, C.M., Smith, C.U.: PMIF+: extensions to broaden the scope of supported models. In: Balsamo, M.S., Knottenbelt, W.J., Marin, A. (eds.) EPEW 2013. LNCS, vol. 8168, pp. 134–148. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  25. NovaTec Consulting GmbH: inspectIT. http://www.inspectit.eu/

  26. Parsons, T., Murphy, J.: Detecting performance antipatterns in component based enterprise systems. J. Object Technol. 7(3), 55–91 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Rohr, M., van Hoorn, A., Giesecke, S., Matevska, J., Hasselbring, W., Alekseev, S.: Trace-context sensitive performance profiling for enterprise software applications. In: Proceedings of the SPEC International Performance Evaluation Workshop (SIPEW 2008), pp. 283–302 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  28. SPEC Research Group: OPEN—APM interoperability initiative (2016). http://research.spec.org/apm-interoperability/

  29. Vögele, C., van Hoorn, A., Schulz, E., Hasselbring, W., Krcmar, H.: WESSBAS: extraction of probabilistic workload specifications for load testing and performance prediction–a model-driven approach for session-based application systems. J. Softw. Syst. Model. (2016). Under revision

    Google Scholar 

  30. Walter, J., van Hoorn, A., Koziolek, H., Okanovic, D., Kounev, S.: Asking “what”?, automating the “how”?: the vision of declarative performance engineering. In: Proceedings of the 7th ACM/SPEC on International Conference on Performance Engineering, pp. 91–94. ICPE 2016. ACM (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Woodside, C.M., Petriu, D.C., Petriu, D.B., Shen, H., Israr, T., Merseguer, J.: Performance by unified model analysis (PUMA). In: Proceedings of the 5th Internation Workshop on Software and Performance (WOSP 2005), pp. 1–12 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work is being supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grant no. 01IS15004, diagnoseIT), by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the Priority Programme “DFG-SPP 1593: Design For Future—Managed Software Evolution” (HO 5721/1-1, DECLARE), and by the Research Group of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC RG, http://research.spec.org). Special thanks go to Alexander Bran, Alper Hidiroglu, and Manuel Palenga — Bachelor’s students at the University of Stuttgart — for their support in the evaluation of the APM tools.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Software Technology, Reliable Software Systems, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Dušan Okanović & André van Hoorn

  2. CA Application Performance Management, NovaTec Consulting GmbH, Leinfelden-Echterdingen, Germany

    Christoph Heger, Alexander Wert & Stefan Siegl

Authors
  1. Dušan Okanović
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. André van Hoorn
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Christoph Heger
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Alexander Wert
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Stefan Siegl
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to André van Hoorn .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ghent University, Gent, Belgium

    Dieter Fiems

  2. University of Florence, Firenze, Italy

    Marco Paolieri

  3. University of the Aegean, Chios, Greece

    Agapios N. Platis

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Okanović, D., van Hoorn, A., Heger, C., Wert, A., Siegl, S. (2016). Towards Performance Tooling Interoperability: An Open Format for Representing Execution Traces. In: Fiems, D., Paolieri, M., Platis, A. (eds) Computer Performance Engineering. EPEW 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9951. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46433-6_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46433-6_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46432-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-46433-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation