UML-driven software performance engineering: A systematic mapping and trend analysis

Performance is critical to the success of every software system. As a sub-area of software engineering, Software Performance Engineering (SPE) is a systematic and quantitative discipline to construct software systems that meet performance objectives. A family of SPE approaches that has become popular in the last decade is SPE based on models developed using the Unified Modeling Language (UML), referred to as UML-Driven Software Performance Engineering (UML-SPE). This particular research area has emerged and grown since late 1990s when the UML was proposed. More than 100 papers have been published so far in this area. As this research area matures and the number of related papers increases, it is important to systematically summarize and categorize the current state-of-the-art and to provide an overview of the trends in this specialized field. The authors systematically map the body of knowledge related to UML-SPE through a Systematic Mapping (SM) study. As part of this study, they pose two sets of research questions, define selection and exclusion criteria, and systematically develop and refine a systematic map (classification schema). In addition, the authors conduct bibliometric, demographic, and trend analysis of the included papers. The study pool includes a set of 90 papers (from 114 identified papers) published in the area of UML-SPE between 1998 and 2011. The authors derive the trends in terms of types of papers, types of SPE activities, and types of evaluations. They also report the demographics and bibliometrics trends in this domain and discuss the emerging trends in UML-SPE and the implications for researchers and practitioners in this area.