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Management of performance requirements is a major challenge for information systems as well as other software systems. This is because performance requirements (e.g., "a student records system should have good response time for registering students") can have a global impact on the target system. In addition, there are interactions and trade-offs among performance requirements, other nonfunctional requirements (NFRs, or software quality attributes, e.g., accuracy), and the numerous alternatives for the target system. To provide a systematic approach to managing performance requirements, this paper presents a "Performance Requirements Framework" (PeRF) It integrates and catalogues a variety of kinds of knowledge of information systems and performance These include performance concepts, Software Performance Engineering (SPE) principles for "building performance into" systems, and information systems development knowledge (including requirements, design, implementation, and performance). In addition, layered structures organize performance knowledge and the development process. All this knowledge is represented using an existing goal-oriented approach, the "NFR Framework," which offers a developer-directed graphical treatment for stating NFRs, analyzing and interrelating them, and determining the impact of decisions upon NFRs. This approach allows customized solutions to be built, taking into account the characteristics of the particular domain. The use of PeRF in managing performance requirements is illustrated in a study of performance requirements and other NFRs for a university's student records system. This paper concludes with a summary of other studies of information systems, tool support, and directions for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An approach to software performance testing is discussed. A case study describing the experience of using this approach for testing the performance of a system used as a gateway in a large industrial client/server transaction processing application is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American Society for Quality's defines best practice as a superior method or innovative practice that contributes to the improved performance of an organization, usually recognized as best by other peer organizations. The fact is that there really is no mechanism to formally establish best practices in the software development community. A large gaps often occur between different business units' practices and often even in projects within a given business unit. Certainly an organization's use of almost any software development practice will differ depending from person to person. INSET: Goodbye... Hello..

The article presents the closely related issues of performance requirements and of testing. Brian Nixon's paper, "Managing Performance Requirements for Information Systems," describes a framework called Performance Requirements Framework (PeRF) for presenting and managing the performance requirements for information systems. Since information system have to maintain a persistent database and provide an interface with external users, with functional and nonfunctional requirements have to be considered. Functional requirements describe what an information system should do, whereas nonfunctional requirements consider software quality factors such as security and reliability. The paper proposes the treatment of performance requirements as non functional requirements and applies PeRF to manage the performance requirements of a University's student records system. Elaine Weyuker and Filippos Vokolos provide a healthy dose of practicality in "Experience With Performance Testing of Software System."