Performance Certification of Software Components

Non-functional properties of software should be specified early in the development process. In a distributed process of software development, this means that quality requirements must be made explicit in the specification, and the developing party of a commissioned component needs to deliver not only the implemented component, but also a description of its non-functional properties. Based on these artefacts, a conformance check guarantees that the implemented component fulfills the performance requirements.We extend the notion of model refinement to non-functional properties of software and propose a refinement calculus for conformance checking between abstract performance descriptions of components. The calculus is based on a refinement notion that covers the performance-relevant aspects of components. The approach is applied to the Palladio Component Model as a description language for performance properties of components.