A Short History of Performance Engineering
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The document provides a short history of performance engineering, beginning in the 1960s with the introduction of instrumentation tools for mainframe systems and the first studies of human response times. Key developments include the establishment of the performance engineering community in the 1970s, the first commercial performance analysis tools and distributed computing in the late 1970s, and the publication of early books on software performance engineering and applying existing expertise to web performance in the 1990s. The history shows that performance has been an ongoing concern across different computing paradigms, with new challenges arising with each new technology.
![There Was [Performance]
Life Even Before Web
Some statements referring to history look
incorrect
Performance engineering history is not well
known
– Not much information readily available
So I decided to share a few bits of
information I know / found
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A Short History of Performance Engineering
- 1. Velocity NY A Short History of Performance Engineering Alexander Podelko [email protected] alexanderpodelko.com/blog @apodelko October 14, 2013 1
- 2. About Me I have specialized in performance for the last 16 years Currently performance testing and optimization of Hyperion products at Oracle Board director at CMG http://cmg.org, organization of performance and capacity professionals – Conference November 4-8, 2013 in La Jolla, CA Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my personal views only and do not necessarily represent those of my current or previous employers. All brands and trademarks mentioned are the property of their owners. 2
- 3. There Was [Performance] Life Even Before Web Some statements referring to history look incorrect Performance engineering history is not well known – Not much information readily available So I decided to share a few bits of information I know / found 3
- 4. The Approach First mature appearances of still relevant performance notions – From what I found – No discussion about further rich history of each notion My subjective choices based on very limited information 4
- 5. Computing Paradigms Looks like a new wave of performance engineering starts 10+ years after new computing paradigm Mainframes – Late 50s Distributed Systems – Late 70s Web – Mid 90s ? – Mobile, Cloud 5
- 6. 1966: Instrumentation 1966 – SMF (System Management Facilities) released as part of OS/360 – Still in use Big Data ? Deep Diagnostics ? IT Operations Analytics ? 6
- 7. 1968: Response Times 1968 - Robert Miller (IBM) in his "Response Time in Man-Computer Conversational Transactions" paper described several threshold levels of human attention – Widely cited by many later researchers 7
- 8. 1974: Monitoring 1974 – RMF (Resource Measurement Facility) released as part of MVS – Still in use 1975 – OMEGAMON for MVS by Candle – Claimed to be the first real-time monitor – Acquired by IBM in 2004 8
- 9. 1975: Community 1975 – The Computer Measurement Group (CMG) was created, holding annual conferences since – Coming Performance and Capacity 2013 by CMG November 4-8 in La Jolla, CA http://cmg.org/conference/cmg2013/ – Proceedings available to public (1976-2010) http://cmg.org/proceedings/ 9
- 10. 1977: Performance Analysis Tool 1977 – BEST/1 was released by BGS Systems, capacity and performance management tool – the first commercial package for computer performance analysis to be based on analytic models. BGS Systems was acquired by BMC Software in 1998 10
- 11. Late 70s - Distributed Systems Distributed Systems – Client/Server, Three-Tier, N-Tier, etc. Less control, less instrumentation More need for performance design and testing 11
- 12. 1990: Software Performance Engineering 1990 – Dr. Connie Smith's book Performance Engineering of Software Systems was published – 15 pages of bibliography "Fix-it-later was once a viable approach, but it is now inappropriate and dangerous" 12
- 13. Does It Remind You Anything? Fix-it-later was a viable approach in the 1970s, but today the original promises no longer hold, and fix-it-later is archaic and dangerous. The original premises were: – Performance problems are rare. – Hardware is fast and inexpensive. – It's too expensive to build responsive software. – You can tune software later, if necessary. Performance Engineering of Software Systems, 1990. 13
- 14. 1991: Load Testing Tools 1991 – LoadRunner was released by Mercury Interactive – Acquired by HP in 2006 for $4.5B Performance expertise moves to performance testing teams 14
- 15. 1998 ? – End-User Monitoring 1998 – ETEWatch released by Candle – Application response time monitor – End-to-End Watch – Candle acquired by IBM in 2004, then a part of Tivioli Anybody know other EUM/RUM roots? 15
- 16. Mid 90s - Web Most of existing expertise from mainframe and distributed eras still applicable to back end Books by D. Menasce and V. Almeida (1998, 2000, and 2001) – Applying existing expertise to Web 16
- 17. 2007: Web Performance Optimization 2007 – Steve Souders' book High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers was published New Web-specific expertise 17
- 18. 2008: WPO Community 2008 – First Velocity conference 18
- 19. Takeaways Check your facts when you refer to history A lot was done in the past – not always necessary to re-invent the wheel The feeling that we are close to solving performance problems exists last 40+ years – Probably will stay with us for a while 19
Editor's Notes
- #7: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22221172@N00/2627291590
- #8: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8543480@N06/5565773185
- #9: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24205142@N00/2370873167/
- #12: http://www.flickr.com/photos/65615735@N00/4263449886
- #15: http://www.flickr.com/photos/99112767@N00/420926118/