Using UML models for the performance analysis of network systems

The automated functional and performance analysis of communication systems specified with some Formal Description Technique has long been the goal of telecommunication engineers. In the past SDL and Petri nets have been the most popular FDTs for the purpose. With the growth in popularity of UML the most obvious question to ask is whether one can translate one or more UML diagrams describing a system to a performance model. Until the advent of UML 2.0, that has been an impossible task because the semantics were not clear. Even though the UML semantics are still not clear for the purpose, using ITU recommendation Z.109 with UML 2.0 now released, we describe in this paper a methodology and tool called proSPEX (protocol Software Performance Engineering using XMI) for the design and performance analysis of communication protocols specified with UML.