Data Mining System Execution Traces to Validate Distributed System Quality-of-Service Properties

System Execution Modeling (SEM) tools enable distributed system testers to validate Quality-of-Service (QoS) properties, such as end-to-end response time, throughput, and scalability, during early phases of the software lifecycle. Analytical capabilities of QoS properties, however, are traditionally bounded by a SEM tool’s capabilities. This chapter discusses how to mine system execution traces, which are a collection of log messages describing events and states of a distributed system throughout its execution lifetime, generated by distributed systems so that the validation of QoS properties is not dependent on a SEM tool’s capabilities. The author uses a real-life case study to illustrate how data mining system execution traces can assist in discovering potential performance bottlenecks using system execution traces.