A Practical MDA Approach for Autonomic Profiling and Performance Assessment

Abstract

By releasing their Model Driven Architecture (MDA) as a new standard, the Object Management Group (OMG) [1] proposed a new development concept toward existing traditional paradigms. It set a new exciting research area in which it would be possible to develop truly independent and powerful programming environments capable of achieving new levels of productivity, performance and maintainability. With this goal in mind, this paper describes a research conducted with the purpose of improving database performance through the union of autonomic computing aspects and MDA. It is widely accepted that the model development approach is gaining importance in IT projects today; therefore the technique discussed here, presents a way of assessing performance, identifying flaws and improving software activities in order to create a self-managed environment. With new defined stereotypes and tagged values; in conjunction with profiling libraries, and relying on autonomic aspects, the proposed extension enables code generation in order to conduct a thorough set of performance analysis, indicating the best suitable database configuration for a given functionality. After setting the underlying problem, explaining tools configuration and concepts and describing the profiling technique, it presents a study based on a real project conducted by the Brazilian Ministry of Defense.