| Model Driven Architecture (MDA), the new approach to software development proposed by OMG, promotes the idea that software development should be based on models throughout the entire software lifecycle. In the context of MDA, it becomes important to have the ability to evaluate at an early stage the performance characteristics of UML models, in order ensure that the systems under development will meet their performance requirements.; This work proposes an XML-based transformation method of an annotated UML model into different performance models, which can be further analyzed with existing tools. The mapping between the input model and the output model is defined at a higher level of abstraction based on graph transformation concepts; whereas the definition of the transformation rules and algorithm uses lower level XML trees manipulations techniques, such as XMLgebra. The actual implementation of the proposed model transformation is based on eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT). The input to the XSLT transformation program is an XML file that contains a UML design in XML format, produced by an existing UML/XMI tool according to the standard XML Metadata Interchange (XMI). The first transformation step converts the input UML model into an Intermediate Model (IM), which is also in XML format. The Intermediate Model contains only the necessary information for constructing a performance model, and was defined in this work based on the domain model of the UML Profile for Schedulability, Performance and Time. In a second transformation step, a performance model, such as LQN or CSIM, is generated from IM. As part of this thesis work, the proposed transformations from UML to performance models is applied to a case study and verification issues are discussed. |
