Experimenting the Influence of Numerical Thresholds on Model-based Detection and Refactoring of Performance Antipatterns

Performance antipatterns are well-known bad design practices that lead to software products suffering from poor performance. A number of performance antipatterns has been defined and classified and refactoring actions have also been suggested to remove them. In the last few years, we have dedicated some effort to the detection and refactoring of performance antipatterns in software models.A specific characteristic of performance antipatterns is that they contain numerical parameters that may represent thresholds referring to either performance indices (e.g., a device utilization) or design features (e.g., number of interface operations of a software component). In this paper, we analyze the influence of such thresholds on the capability of detecting and refactoring performance antipatterns. In particular, (i) we analyze how a set of detected antipatterns may change while varying the threshold values and (ii) we discuss the influence of thresholds on the complexity of refactoring actions. With the help of a leading example, we quantify the influence using precision and recall metrics

Evaluating the performance of model transformation styles in Maude

Rule-based programming has been shown to be very successful in many application areas. Two prominent examples are the specification of model transformations in model driven development approaches and the definition of structured operational semantics of formal languages. General rewriting frameworks such as Maude are flexible enough to allow the programmer to adopt and mix various rule styles. The choice between styles can be biased by the programmer’s background. For instance, experts in visual formalisms might prefer graph-rewriting styles, while experts in semantics might prefer structurally inductive rules. This paper evaluates the performance of different rule styles on a significant benchmark taken from the literature on model transformation. Depending on the actual transformation being carried out, our results show that different rule styles can offer drastically different performances. We point out the situations from which each rule style benefits to offer a valuable set of hints for choosing one style over the other

Consolidation of Customized Product Copies into Software Product Lines

In software development, project constraints lead to customer-specific variants by copying and adapting the product. During this process, modifications are scattered all over the code. Although this is flexible and efficient in the short term, a Software Product Line (SPL) offers better results in the long term, regarding cost reduction, time-to-market, and quality attributes. This book presents a novel approach named SPLevo, which consolidates customized product copies into an SPL