Performance Evaluation: Origins and Directions

This monograph-like state-of-the-art survey presents the history, the key ideas, the success stories, and future challenges of performance evaluation and demonstrates the impact of performance evaluation on a variety of different areas through case studies in a coherent and comprehensive way. Leading researchers in the field have contributed 19 cross-reviewed topical chapters competently covering the whole range of performance evaluation, from theoretical and methodological issues to applications in numerous other fields. Additionally, the book contains one contribution on the role of performance evaluation in industry and personal accounts of four pioneering researchers describing the genesis of breakthrough results.The book will become a valuable source of reference and indispensable reading for anybody active or interested in performance evaluation.

Inhalt

Position Paper.- Performance Evaluation in Industry: A Personal Perspective.- Topical Area Papers.- Mainframe Systems.- Performance Analysis of Storage Systems.- Ad Hoc, Wireless, Mobile Networks: The Role of Performance Modeling and Evaluation.- Trace-Driven Memory Simulation: A Survey.- Performance Issues in Parallel Processing Systems.- Measurement-Based Analysis of Networked System Availability.- Performance of Client/Server Systems.- Performance Characteristics of the World Wide Web.- Parallel Job Scheduling: A Performance Perspective.- Scheduling of Real-Time Tasks with Complex Constraints.- Software Performance Evaluation by Models.- Performance Analysis of Database Systems.- Performance Analysis of Concurrency Control Methods.- Numerical Analysis Methods.- Product Form Queueing Networks.- Stochastic Modeling Formalisms for Dependability, Performance and Performability.- Analysis and Application of Polling Models.- Discrete-Event Simulation in Performance Evaluation.- Workload Characterization Issues and Methodologies.- Personal Accounts of Key Contributors.- From the Central Server Model to BEST/1©.- Mean Value Analysis: A Personal Account.- The Early Days of GSPNs.- The Discovery of Self-Similar Traffic.