Integrated tools for performance-oriented distributed software development

This paper presents an integrated set or tools for performance-oriented development of software targeted to distributed heterogeneous systems. Using these tools, software development is carried out through a friendly and handy graphical interface, able to exploit the MetaPL notation system for software description and the HeSSE simulation environment for its performance evaluation. MetaPL is an XML-based language that allows the description and the analysis at different level of detail of programs written in any distributed programming language and run-time support. HeSSE is a simulation environment that makes it possible to predict parallel and distributed software performance even in the first steps of software development, when no actual code has yet been written. The paper shows how MetaPL and HeSSE, along with the relative tools, have been integrated in order to provide a flexible and general-purpose graphical development environment and presents an example of its use.