Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Performance measurement software'

This thesis is about software project scheduling and use of earned value method on software projects. As a result of the study, a solution for software project scheduling problems is proposed. A mathematical formulation, developed using integer programming method, is at the heart of the solution. Objective of the formulation is to minimize the development costs consisting of direct labor cost, indirect costs and probable penalty costs. The formulation takes the capability and compatibility variances among resources into account whereas contemporary approaches mostly focus on resource availability. Formulation is of type discrete time and takes the time span to be searched as input. Therefore a heuristic approach has been developed for providing time span input to the models developed using the formulation. The heuristic approach has been proven to be calculating a time span that does not hinder achieving the absolute optimum schedule and shortens the solution time of the integer programs. The heuristic approach and problem formulation have been incorporated into a computer program that generates integer programs and heuristic solutions. This thesis also describes a method for preparing an earned value plan, based on the scheduling solution defined. The method aims to help project managers in determining the status of their projects and deciding whether any corrective action is required or not. Besides the method, approaches for incorporating indirect costs and penalty costs, which are not explicitly discussed in literature, into final cost estimation have been described.

Business process improvement for increased product quality is of continuous importance in the software industry. Quality managers in this sector need effective, hands-on tools for decision-making in engineering projects and for rapidly spotting key improvement areas. Measurement programs are a widespread approach for introducing quality improvement in software processes, yet employing all-embracing state-of-the art quality assurance models is labor intensive. Unfortunately, these do not primarily focus on measures, revealing a need for an instant and straightforward technique for identifying and defining measures in projects without resources or need for entire measurement programs. This thesis explores and compares prevailing quality assurance models using measures, rendering the Measurement Discovery Process constructed from selected parts of the PSM and GQM techniques. The composed process is applied to an industrial project with the given prerequisites, providing a set of measures that are subsequently evaluated. In addition, the application gives foundation for analysis of the Measurement Discovery Process. The application and analysis of the process show its general applicability to projects with similar constraints as well as the importance of formal target processes and exhaustive project domain knowledge among measurement implementers. Even though the Measurement Discovery Process is subject to future refinement, it is clearly a step towards rapid delivery of tangible business performance indicators for process improvement.
Vikten av förbättringar i affärsprocesser i syfte att öka produktkvaliteten i mjukvaruindustrin ökar stadigt. Kvalitetsansvariga i industrin behöver effektiva och påtagliga verktyg för beslutsfattande i utvecklingsprojekt och för lokalisering av förbättringsområden. Mätningsprogram är en utbredd ansats för kvalitetsförbättring i mjukvaruprocesser men användning av heltäckande kvalitetsmodeller är resurskrävande. Dessa fokuserar inte primärt på mätpunkter vilket blottar behovet av en snabb och direkt teknik för identifiering och definiering av mätpunkter i projekt som saknar resurser eller behov av heltäckande mätningsprogram. Denna uppsats undersöker och jämför rådande kvalitetssäkringsmodeller med mätpunkter, vilket resulterar i Measurement Discovery Process utifrån valda delar av PSM- och GQM-modellerna. Processen appliceras på ett industriellt projekt med nämnda förutsättningar, vilket skapar en uppsättning mätpunkter som sedan utvärderas. Detta ligger även till grund för utvärdering av Measurement Discovery Process. Appliceringen och utvärderingen av processen synliggör dess generella applicerbarhet på projekt med liknande begränsningar såväl som vikten av formella processer i målprojektet och omfattande domänkunskap hos de som implementerar mätningarna. Measurement Discovery Process är föremål för framtida förbättringar men samtidigt ett tydligt steg mot snabbt framtagande av konkreta prestandamått för kvalitetsförbättring i affärsprocesser.
Mattias Axelsson: +46 708 67 53 81 Johan Sonesson: +46 709 72 74 30 / +46 40 12 48 03

Performance is the driving force for the effective network utilization in the current telecommunication world. The thesis aims to define suitable performance measurement methodologies for communication over stack based Signalling System No 7 (SS7). This thesis also throws a quick glance on open source SS7 and Ericsson proprietary SS7 protocols, to devise performance measurement approach that can be adopted to develop sophisticated tools. We adopt a scientific experimental approach for numerical measurement of throughput and latency of the protocol stack. Our current work finishes experimentation with open source SS7 protocol (SCTP) in Fedora based two identical servers. SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) is an important transport layer protocol for communication of SS7 message over an IP network. Message communication using SCTP protocol over an IP/Ethernet network between these two identical servers has been measured and analyzed using the IPerf tool. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) being another important transport layer protocol of TCP/IP stack, the performance of TCP is compared with SCTP. The results prove that under normal circumstances TCP gains over SCTP and our analysis support that under multi homing support, SCTP should gain over TCP when throughput is measured

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics
This Work Project (WP) addresses the challenges faced by companies, particularly software houses, in reporting, decision making and controlling project performance activities. It focuses on issues regarding design and implementation of management control systems to support those activities and help achieve strategic goals. The WP suggests courses of action to be followed to improve the quality of information provided by such systems for budgeting and costing projects, and evaluate their performance. A case study approach (Ryan et al. 2002) was followed, applying Pinheiro’s (2007) control plan to a real company. The findings may apply to other companies facing similar constraints.

NETI@home is an open-source software package that collects network performance statistics from end-systems. It has been written for and tested on the Windows, Solaris, and Linux operating systems, with testing for other operating systems to be completed soon. NETI@home is designed to run on end-user machines and collect various statistics about Internet performance. These statistics are then sent to a server at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where they are collected and made publicly available. This tool gives researchers much needed data on the end-to-end performance of the Internet, as measured by end-users. NETI@homes basic approach is to sniff packets sent from and received by the host and infer performance metrics based on these observed packets. NETI@home users are able to select a privacy level that determines what types of data are gathered, and what is not reported. NETI@home is designed to be an unobtrusive software system that runs quietly in the background with little or no intervention by the user, and using few resources.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:51:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3816.pdf: 4863578 bytes, checksum: 8fb712be8abe6ebad7be0ebb336f461b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-04-29
The performance measurement implementation fails in many companies because of lack of information technology (IT) support. Hence it is obvious that IT is one of the critical success factors for performance measurement implementation. The successful implementation of performance measurement depends less on selecting the right measures and more on the way the measures are implemented and used by the people in the business. The data collection, analysis and reporting should be automated as much as possible to save time and effort as well as to provide consistency. Software from PMS is defined as an ideal the better designed (technical factors) and meet people (personal factors) of the organization. The successful deployment of an PMS is related to the ability of organizations to react to changes and manage the use of automated performance measurement, exploiting the latest technology. This thesis aims to improve software performance measurement based on user satisfaction in a business of pulp and paper. The quasi-experiment showed that the end user participating in the full development of PMS, since its design and in all stages of validation or the definition of improvement, they realize the benefits of deployment, and can understand the logic of the management model the company, its tools and concepts. The results of research in this thesis, we hope to benefit many users who have or are planning to implement performance measurement software.
A implantação de Sistemas de Medição de Desempenho (SMD) muitas vezes falha por causa de falta ou uso incorreto da Tecnologia de Informação (TI). O sucesso na implantação desse tipo de sistema depende tanto da seleção correta das medidas de desempenho quanto do modo como elas serão implantadas e utilizadas na empresa. Por isso, a coleta de dados, a análise e a informação devem ser automatizadas o máximo possível para economizar tempo e esforço como também para prover consistência. Um software de SMD é definido como ideal quanto melhor for projetado (fatores técnicos) e quanto melhor satisfazer as pessoas (fatores pessoais) da organização. O sucesso na implantação de um SMD está relacionado à capacidade das organizações para reagir a mudanças e a gerenciar o uso de sistemas automatizados de medição de desempenho, que exploram a tecnologia mais recente. Esta dissertação tem por objetivo melhorar o software de medição de desempenho com base na satisfação do usuário em uma empresa de celulose e papel. O quase-experimento realizado demonstrou que o usuário final participa do desenvolvimento integral do SMD, desde o seu projeto e em todas as etapas de validação ou na definição de melhorias, percebe os benefícios da implantação, e também consegue compreender a lógica, as ferramentas e os conceitos do modelo de gestão da empresa. Os resultados da investigação apresentada nesta tese deve beneficiar muitos usuários que têm ou estão planejando implementar um software de medição de desempenho.

Thesis (M.S. in Leadership and Human Resource Development)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2000.
Thesis advisors, Owen, Walter E. ; Snider, Keith F. "June 2000." Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-90). Also available in print.

La mesure de la performance est l’une des nombreuses activités de la gestion de projet, elle contribue à assurer le succès du projet. Pour atteindre ce but, les entreprises ont besoin de déterminer un système de mesures de la performance. Ces mesures fournissent au chef de projet l’état de santé du projet et l’aide à évaluer s’il a atteint ou va atteindre ses objectifs. Néanmoins, avec la complexité croissante des projets et la nécessité économique absolue d’atteindre les objectifs, les chefs de projets ne peuvent plus se contenter de superviser les coûts et le planning pour évaluer la performance du projet. Ils ont besoin de considérer par exemple d’autres indicateurs comme la satisfaction des exigences du client, la maturité de la technologie, etc. De plus, ils ont besoin d’avoir une évaluation précise des valeurs de ces indicateurs tout au long du projet et pas uniquement à la fin, pour monitorer au mieux le projet afin qu’il atteigne ses objectifs. Pour satisfaire ces nouveaux besoins, les objectifs de cette thèse sont d’étendre le nombre d’indicateurs génériques et de diversifier le type des indicateurs, ainsi que de proposer une méthode pour concevoir des indicateurs spécifiques à un projet. Pour cela, nous procédons par l’intégration de bonnes pratiques pour la mesure de performance issues de plusieurs domaines de l’ingénierie, et illustrons nos propositions sur des cas pratiques. Ce rapport introduit la notion de performance et caractérise les systèmes de mesure de performance, en mettant notamment en évidence un emploi non cohérent de la terminologie selon les sources. Il identifie plusieurs limitations des systèmes de mesure de performance actuels et souligne notamment le besoin d’étendre le nombre et le type des indicateurs, et de construire des indicateurs de performance spécifiques et pertinents pour chaque projet. Une étude bibliographique sur la mesure de la performance dans les domaines de l’ingénierie, notamment en ingénierie système, montre que la mesure de performance est particulièrement bien développée dans cette dernière discipline, avec une offre de 18 indicateurs génériques avancés permettant une grande proactivité. La thèse propose de ce fait d’adapter ces indicateurs au management de projets, résultant en la définition d’un ensemble d’indicateurs étendu et diversifié pour la mesure de performance. Par ailleurs, l’étude des normes et guides en ingénierie système et logicielle (Practical Software and System Measurement, ISO/IEC 15939) nous amène à identifier d’autres besoins, comme la création dynamique d’indicateurs ad hoc qu’il est nécessaire de définir en cours de projet afin évaluer certains risques spécifiques, et soulève de nouvelles difficultés, comme la collecte et la manipulation des données pour la construction des indicateurs. Pour y répondre, ce rapport propose donc également une méthode guidant la construction dynamique d’indicateurs spécifiques. Celle-ci, illustrée dans le mémoire sur un cas concret de projet, a été validée par un panel d’experts
Performance measurement is essential to ensure the success of a project. To this goal, companies need to determine a system of performance measures, classically including cost and schedule measures, which provide the project manager with the project health status and help her or him to evaluate the project successes and failures. However, with the increasing complexity of projects and the absolute necessity to reach the project objectives, project managers cannot only rely on such information about cost and schedule to evaluate the project performance; they need to consider, for instance, other indicators such as the satisfaction of customer requirements, the technology maturity, etc. Moreover, they need to have a precise evaluation of these indicators values while the project is in progress, in order to monitor it at best so that it reaches its goals, and not only after the project ends, to only conclude on the project success or failure without any mean to react. Considering these two issues, the objectives of the thesis thus are to extend the number, scope and type of current project performance indicators with a proposal of complementary indicators, and to propose a method for designing project-specific indicators, in order to improve project performance measurement. To define supplementary indicators and elaborate such a method, we proceed by integrating good measurement practices from different engineering disciplines and illustrate our proposal on use cases. The thesis first introduces the notion of performance and characterizes performance measurement systems (PMSs); such systems offer a wide panel of models for organizational performance measurement. Focusing on PMSs, we provide some insights for project performance measurement. More precisely, we identify several issues highlighted in literature, relative to the limitations of current project performance measurement such as the need to balance lagging indicators (to control) with leading indicators (to monitor), and the need to construct performance indicators that are relevant to project-specific information needs. We then focus on project performance measurement and reviews literature in this domain. It highlights the issue of the unbalanced use of leading and lagging indicators. To bring a solution to the issue, we review literature of performance measurement in engineering disciplines, with a focus on systems engineering practices, especially a panel of 18 generic leading indicators that are currently engineered in guidance. A method has been proposed to adapt the set of systems engineering leading indicators to project management, thus resulting in developing the set of indicators to measure project performance. Moreover, focusing on standards and guides on measurement in systems and software engineering led us to identify other issues in project performance measurement, such as the difficulties to define indicators dynamically for a project, and how to collect and combine data in order to construct these indicators. We finally consider the methodological difficulties about designing relevant performance indicators. More precisely, we identify 3 issues: different opinions among researchers about the sources from where the indicators will be derived; the problem in relation to the transformation from data to indicators; and the association of data collection, analysis and report with project management processes. To solve these issues, we analyze good practices from the Practical Software and Systems Measurement, the ISO/IEC 15939 norm and the Project Management Body of Knowledge that proved to be able to address the identified issues respectively. This work results in a method integrating these practices to address the 3 identified issues in project performance measurement. The method is illustrated on a real project context. Evaluation of the method has been conducted in workshop of project managers, which confirmed the interest for the proposal

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) används i allt större utsträckning för att samla in data om mjukvarusystems prestanda och om hur användare interagerar med systemen. Detta för att säkerställa tillgänglighet och robusthet samt förbättra slutanvändarupplevelser. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur införandet av APM kan gå till, vilka utmaningar som finns samt vilka kostnader och prestandaförsämringar som införandet innebär. Detta görs genom en fallstudie där APM implementeras i Enterprise Resource Planning-systemet MONITOR G5 som utvecklats av det svenska företaget Monitor ERP System AB. Systemet är utvecklat i Microsofts mjukvaruramverk .NET Framework och APM-tjänsten som används är Microsofts Application Insights. Studien resulterade i ett förslag på en APM-lösning där data om användarinteraktioner, prestanda och uppkomna fel samlas in och visualiseras. Sex instrumentpaneler skapades som visar olika aspekter av insamlade data, bland annat prestandamätvärden såsom processor- och minnesanvändning, uppkomna fel, laddningstider för vyer samt vilka delar av systemet som används mest och minst. Kostnadsanalysen visar att kostnaderna kan bli väldigt höga, men förslag på strategier för att hålla kostnaderna nere ges. Prestandatesterna som utfördes för att undersöka APM-lösningens påverkan på systemets prestanda gav otillförlitliga resultat, men det är troligt att prestandakostnaden för APM är liten.
The use of Application Performance Monitoring (APM) for collecting data about performance and end-user behaviors in complex software systems is increasing. APM is used to ensure availability and robustness and to enhance end-user experiences. This study aims to investigate how the adoption of APM can be done, what challenges organizations face during the implementation as well as costs and performance overhead associated with APM. This is achieved through a case study in which APM is introduced into the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system MONITOR G5, developed and maintained by the Swedish software company Monitor ERP System AB. The system is developed in Microsoft’s .NET Framework and the APM service used is Microsoft’s Application Insights. The study resulted in a proposed APM solution wherein data regarding user interactions, performance and errors are collected and visualized. Six dashboards were created, showing different aspects of the collected data, for instance: which parts of the system is most and least frequently used, errors, load times and performance metrics such as processor and memory usage. The cost analysis shows that monetary costs can be very high, but strategies for suppressing costs are proposed. The performance tests that were conducted to determine the performance overhead of APM are inconclusive, but it is likely that the performance penalty of using APM is small.

The Stressometer system is a measurement and control system used in cold rolling to improve the flatness of a metal strip. In order to achieve this goal the system employs a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) control system that has a considerable number of sensors and actuators. As a consequence the computational load on the Stressometer control system becomes very high if too advance functions are used. Simultaneously advances in rolling mill mechanical design makes it necessary to implement more complex functions in order for the Stressometer system to stay competitive. Most industrial players in this market considers improved computational power, for measurement, control and modeling applications, to be a key competitive factor. Accordingly there is a need to improve the computational power of the Stressometer system. Several different approaches towards this objective have been identified, e.g. exploiting hardware parallelism in modern general purpose and graphics processors.

Another approach is to implement different applications in FPGA-based hardware, either tailored to a specific problem or as a part of hardware/software co-design. Through the use of a hardware/software co-design approach the efficiency of the Stressometer system can be increased, lowering overall demand for processing power since the available resources can be exploited more fully. Hardware accelerated platforms can be used to increase the computational power of the Stressometer control system without the need for major changes in the existing hardware. Thus hardware upgrades can be as simple as connecting a cable to an accelerator platform while hardware/software co-design is used to find a suitable hardware/software partition, moving applications between software and hardware.

In order to determine whether this hardware/software co-design approach is realistic or not, the feasibility of implementing simulator, computational and control applications in FPGAbased hardware needs to be determined. This is accomplished by selecting two specific applications for a closer study, determining the feasibility of implementing a Stressometer measuring roll simulator and a parallel Cholesky algorithm in FPGA-based hardware.

Based on these studies this work has determined that the FPGA device technology is perfectly suitable for implementing both simulator and computational applications. The Stressometer measuring roll simulator was able to approximate the force and pulse signals of the Stressometer measuring roll at a relative modest resource consumption, only consuming 1747 slices and eight DSP slices. This while the parallel FPGA-based Cholesky component is able to provide performance in the range of GFLOP/s, exceeding the performance of the personal computer used for comparison in several simulations, although at a very high resource consumption. The result of this thesis, based on the two feasibility studies, indicates that it is possible to increase the processing power of the Stressometer control system using the FPGA device technology.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited
This study evaluated the sensitivity of TAWS detection range calculations to the spatial resolution of scenario backgrounds. Sixteen independent sites were analyzed to determine TAWS background. Multispectral satellite data were processed to different spatial resolutions from 1m to 8km. The resultant imagery was further processed to determine TAWS background type. The TAWS background type was refined to include soil moisture characteristics. Soil moisture analyses were obtained using in situ measurements, the Air Force's Agricultural-Meteorological (AGRMET) model and the Army's Fast All-seasons Soil Strength (FASST) model. The analyzed imagery was compared to the current default 1o latitude by 1o of longitude database in TAWS. The use of the current default TAWS background database was shown to result in TAWS ranges differing from the 1m standard range by 18-23%. The uncertainty was reduced to 5% when background resolution was improved to 8km in rural areas. By contrast, in urban regions the uncertainty was reduced to 14% when spatial resolution was reduced to 30m. These results suggest that the rural and urban designations are important to the definition of a background database.
First Lieutenant, United States Air Force

Este trabalho procurou unir dois temas que, embora sejam muito relevantes, parecem trilhar caminhos independentes na administração: a avaliação de desempenho organizacional e as empresas brasileiras de desenvolvimento de software. Se, por um lado, a avaliação de desempenho organizacional pretende fornecer ferramentas e processos que auxiliem os gestores na condução de seus negócios, por outro lado, o desenvolvimento de software é tido como um setor que gera empregos de alta qualificação e que exporta um produto ou serviço com margens reais bem mais altas que aquelas registradas pela pauta tradicional de exportação. Nesse cenário, uma pesquisa de interesse é entender como é que as empresas brasileiras de desenvolvimento de software fazem avaliação de desempenho organizacional. Para cumprir com os objetivos deste trabalho exploratório, foi utilizada uma abordagem tanto qualitativa (dois estudos de caso) quanto quantitativa (16 respondentes de survey). Como resultados preliminares, há indicação de que existe um processo de amadurecimento da avaliação de desempenho das empresas de desenvolvimento de software e esse amadurecimento inclui a diminuição da importância atribuída ao curtíssimo prazo e o aumento da importância do médio e longo prazos. Estágios mais avançados desse amadurecimento devem incluir níveis cada vez maiores de sistematização das práticas de avaliação de desempenho e também devem privilegiar determinadas dimensões de avaliação. Em relação à percepção e à prática, também como resultados preliminares, percebe-se que as empresas não consideram importante preocuparem-se com as dimensões sociais e de meio-ambiente e não acreditam que eles gerem impactos positivos nos indicadores financeiros e, talvez, por esse motivo, as práticas são pouco maduras. Por fim, e talvez o resultado preliminar mais importante (até surpreendente), as empresas consideram que ter inovação e pessoas motivadas e desenvolvidas tecnicamente são as dimensões mais importantes e as que geram mais impactos positivos nos indicadores financeiros, mas elas não sabem ou não conseguem implementar indicadores para mensurá-las adequadamente.
This study has tried to bind two subjects of utmost importance but that seems to have independent pathways in Management: organizational performance measurement and Brazilian software development companies. On the one hand, organizational performance measurement intends to offer tools and processes so that managers can improve the way they run their businesses; on the other hand, the software development industry generates highly qualified jobs and exports goods and services with higher margins when compared to the Brazilian traditional export basket. As a result, a research of interest should ask how Brazilian software development companies are conducting organizational performance measurement. In order to comply with the goals of this exploratory study, both qualitative (two study cases) and quantitative (16 respondents of a survey) approaches were applied. Preliminary findings show that evidences lead to the existence of a performance measurement maturation process that software development companies undergo. According to this maturation process, companies shift their focus from the short term to the medium and long terms. More matured companies may experience a growing performance measurement systematization, even if it is non-declared at the beginning, and they should also privilege certain measurement perspectives. Regarding perception and practice, preliminary results show that companies do not perceive social and environmental perspectives as important, and they believe these perspectives do not have positive impacts on financial indicators. Consequently, practices related to these perspectives are not matured. Finally, the most important-even surprising-preliminary findings show companies believe that producing innovation and having motivated and well-trained employees are the most important perspectives to their businesses and they have positive impacts on financial indicators. Nevertheless, they do not know or they are unable to adequately implement performance measurement indicators of these perspectives.

Die Chemnitzer Linux-Tage sind eine Veranstaltung rund um das Thema Open Source. Im Jahr 2012 wurden 104 Vorträge und Workshops gehalten. Der Band enthält ausführliche Beiträge zu 14 Hauptvorträgen sowie Zusammenfassungen zu 90 weiteren Vorträgen
The "Chemnitz Linux Days" is a conference that deals with Linux and Open Source Software. In 2012 104 talks and workshops were given. This volume contains papers of 14 main lectures and 90 abstracts

Die Chemnitzer Linux-Tage sind eine Veranstaltung rund um das Thema Open Source. Im Jahr 2012 wurden 104 Vorträge und Workshops gehalten. Der Band enthält ausführliche Beiträge zu 14 Hauptvorträgen sowie Zusammenfassungen zu 90 weiteren Vorträgen.
The "Chemnitz Linux Days" is a conference that deals with Linux and Open Source Software. In 2012 104 talks and workshops were given. This volume contains papers of 14 main lectures and 90 abstracts.

CARVALHO, Aglaíse Frota Moura. M-CODE: um modelo para medição de confidencialidade e desempenho para aplicações móveis seguras. 2008. 93 f. : Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Ceará, Centro de Ciências, Departamento de Computação, Fortaleza-CE, 2008.
Submitted by guaracy araujo (guaraa3355@gmail.com) on 2016-05-19T18:22:47Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2008_dis_afmcarvalho.pdf: 2003286 bytes, checksum: f365e03fcaf252f6fbc64b60e12f01cc (MD5)
Approved for entry into archive by guaracy araujo (guaraa3355@gmail.com) on 2016-05-19T18:23:52Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2008_dis_afmcarvalho.pdf: 2003286 bytes, checksum: f365e03fcaf252f6fbc64b60e12f01cc (MD5)
Made available in DSpace on 2016-05-19T18:23:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2008_dis_afmcarvalho.pdf: 2003286 bytes, checksum: f365e03fcaf252f6fbc64b60e12f01cc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008
Mobile devices have resource restrictions that constrain the use of security mechanisms in applications, such as e-commerce, which demand, for example, confidentiality issues. There is then a need for a mechanism to help developers to choose the appropriate solution that provides security for a specific mobile device application, taking in consideration the limitation of performance, memory and battery, among others. Thus, this work proposes a security measurement model focused on confidentiality and performance for mobile applications. This model is defined in conformance with the cryptographic algorithm and/or protocol more adequate to the mobile application. Confidentiality and performance degrees are calculated according to the proposed model measurements and weights defined by the secure mobile application developer. . The following measurement approaches are used to specify the proposal: Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) and Goal-Driven Software Measurement (GDSM), variations of these approaches, and the Security Measurement (SM) framework. As a case study, a mobile application already existent is used for the analysis and calculation of the confidentiality and performance degrees of chosen algorithms and protocols
Os dispositivos móveis têm limitações de recursos que restringem o uso de mecanismos de segurança em aplicações, tais como comércio eletrônico, as quais exigem, por exemplo, o requisito de confidencialidade. Como é indispensável a implementação de mecanismos de segurança nesse tipo de aplicações, é fundamental auxiliar os desenvolvedores na escolha de um mecanismo que respeite limitações, por exemplo, de desempenho, memória e bateria, dos dispositivos móveis. Esta dissertação propõe então um modelo para medir o grau de confidencialidade e de desempenho necessários para determinadas aplicações que irão executar em dispositivos móveis. A fim de escolher o algoritmo criptográfico e/ou o protocolo mais adequado a uma aplicação móvel específica, os cálculos da confidencialidade e desempenho são realizados através de medidas já definidas no modelo e de pesos definidos pelo desenvolvedor, de acordo com a relevância de cada medida para aplicação. Para especificar a proposta, as abordagens de Goal-Question-Metric (GQM), Goal-Driven Software Measurement (GDSM), variações destas abordagens e o Security Measurement (SM) framework são utilizados. Em seguida, para validar o modelo, é utilizada uma aplicação móvel segura já existente como estudo de caso, sendo feita a análise e cálculo dos graus de confidencialidade e desempenho de algoritmos e protocolos

This research addresses the concept of performance in the development of complex products. More specifically, its aim is to study how performance is perceived and measured within large global companies, and how performance measurement systems can be designed in a systematic way. The exploratory results regard how performance is currently perceived and measured. It is argued that performance measurements are focused on the later stages of the development of complex products, thus making it difficult to perform changes during the development. The focus is on lagging rather than leading indicators of performance, hence it is concluded that focus is on reporting the result rather than the causes of the result. In line with these findings is the weak link between what managers perceive as success factors and what is measured, the perception of performance being influenced by what is measured, rather than the reverse. The prescriptive results focus on the development of models and frameworks to be used during the development of complex products. A general method for developing performance indicators is presented. The concept of Products in Development is proposed, this making it possible to monitor how value is created during the development of a product. Both these models aim at complementing the currently used performance measurement system in order to support effective and efficient development of complex products. The method used in this research is mainly focused around the collection of qualitative data through a focused group interview, multiple case studies,and industrial reference-group seminars. A survey has also been used to complement the qualitative with quantitative data. The use of various research methods has made it possible to triangulate the data, thus strengthening the validity of the findings.

Organizations use Business Intelligence (BI) systems to monitor how well they are meeting their goals and objectives. Yet, very often BI systems do not include clear models of the organization’s goals or of how to measure whether they are satisfied or not. Several researchers now attempt to integrate goal models into BI systems, but there are still major challenges related to how to get access to the BI data to populate the part of the goal model (often indicators) used to assess goal satisfaction. This thesis explores a new approach to integrate BI systems with goal models. In particular, it explores the integration of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence, a leading BI tool, with an Eclipse-based goal modeling tool named jUCMNav. jUCMNav is an open source graphical editor for the User Requirements Notation (URN), which includes the Use Case Map notation for scenarios and processes and the Goal-oriented Requirement Language for business objectives. URN was recently extended with the concept of Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to enable performance assessment and monitoring of business processes. In jUCMNav, KPIs are currently calculated or modified manually. The new integration proposed in this thesis maps these KPIs to report elements that are generated automatically by Cognos based on the model defined in jUCMNav at runtime, with minimum effort. We are using IBM Cognos Mashup Service, which includes web services that enable the retrieval of report elements at the most granular level. This transformation provides managers and analysts with useful goal-oriented and process-oriented monitoring views fed by just-in-time BI information. This new solution also automates retrieving data from Cognos servers, which helps reducing the high costs usually caused by the amount of manual work required otherwise. The novel approach presented in this thesis avoids manual report generation and minimizes any contract with respect to the location of manually created reports, hence leading to better usability and performance. The approach and its tool support are illustrated with an ongoing example, validated with a case study, and verified through testing.

The use of distributed systems, involving multiple components, has become a common industry practice. However, modeling the behaviour of such systems is a challenge, especially when the behavior consists of several collaborations of different parties, each involving possibly several starting (input) and ending (output) events of the involved components. Furthermore, the global behavior should be described as a composition of several sub-behaviours, in the following called collaborations, and each collaboration may be further decomposed into several sub-collaborations. We assume that the performance of the elementary sub-collaborations is known, and that the performance of the global behavior should be determined from the performance of the contained elementary collaborations and the form of the composition. A collaboration, in this thesis, is characterized by a partial order of input and output events, and the performance of the collaboration is defined by the minimum delays required for a given output event with respect to an input event. This is a generalization of the semantics of UML Activities, where all input events are assumed to occur at the same time, and all output events occur at the same time. We give a semantic definition of the dynamic behavior of composed collaborations using the composition operators for control flow from UML Activity diagrams, in terms of partial order relationships among the involved input and output events. Based on these semantics, we provide formulas for calculating the performance of composed collaborations in terms of the performance of the sub-collaborations, where each delay is characterized by (a) a fixed value, (b) a range of values, and (c) a distribution (in the case of stochastic behaviours). We also propose approximations for the case of stochastic behavior with Normal distributions, and discuss the expected errors that may be introduced due to ignoring of shared resources or possible dependencies in the case of stochastic behaviours. A tool has been developed for evaluating the performance of complex collaborations, and examples and case studies are discussed to illustrate the applicability of the performance analysis and the visual notation which we introduced for representing the partial-order relationships of the input and output events.

Sélectionner des traitements de surface pour l’industrie nécessite de prendre en compte :les propriétés à conférer au substrat, la nature et la géométrie de celui-ci et les caractéristiques du milieu extérieur. Certaines combinaisons de ces paramètres rendent difficile la sélection d’un traitement unique, d’où le recours à des multitraitements de surface. Dès lors, se posent les questions suivantes :

- Utiliser des multitraitements de surface peut se faire en scindant les différentes requêtes en sous-ensembles, de manière à ce que chaque traitement réponde à l’un d’eux. Dans quel ordre ces requêtes doivent-elles être introduites par rapport au substrat ?

- Comment sélectionner les traitements de surface répondant à chaque requête individuelle ?

- Comment classer des multitraitements en termes d’adéquation au problème posé ?

Dans ce travail, les première et troisième questions sont abordées, en explorant les requêtes concernant habituellement les dispositifs de moulage de l’aluminium :

- Résistance aux contraintes d’origine thermique.

- Résistance à la corrosion par les métaux fondus.

- Résistance au frottement.

L’analyse de la bibliographie relative aux traitements de surface utilisés dans ces systèmes a été analysée et des « architectures »-types ont été identifiées (chapitre 3). On prévoit, par exemple, un traitement conférant la résistance à la fatigue superficielle, ainsi qu’un revêtement étanche et résistant à l’aluminium fondu. Une barrière thermique est parfois préconisée.

Pour chacune des architectures, des traitements de surface individuels peuvent être sélectionnés. Un « facteur de performance » permettant de classer les solutions par rapport au problème de la fatigue thermique a été construit (chapitre 4) et discuté dans deux situations :

- Lorsqu’un revêtement est présent, et que les contraintes d’origine thermique (différence de dilatation thermique couche-substrat) menacent de le rompre lors de l’immersion dans un milieu corrosif à haute température. Des essais de corrosion dans de l’aluminium fondu ont été réalisés sur un acier revêtu par du nitrure de chrome dopé à l’aluminium, synthétisé par déposition physique en phase vapeur (chapitre 5 – collaboration :Inasmet).

- Lorsque des variations thermiques rapides menacent de rompre le substrat et la (les) couches. Des essais de fatigue thermique ont été réalisés sur de l’acier à outils pour travail à chaud non traité, boruré ou recouvert d’un multitraitements (zircone yttriée / NiCrAlY / boruration / acier). Le revêtement en zircone yttriée a été obtenu par projection par plasma. L’essai de fatigue thermique a été modélisé et le facteur de performance, discuté (chapitre 6).

Au chapitre 7, les architectures-types ont été introduites dans une méthodologie de sélection des multi-traitements de surface, qui a été appliquée dans deux cas :

- Celui des moules de fonderie, devant résister à la fatigue thermique et à la corrosion par l’aluminium fondu. Le facteur de performance a été extrapolé à d’autres situations qu’aux chapitres 5 et 6. Les solutions habituellement proposées pour résoudre ce problème sont retrouvées.

- Celui de deux pièces en acier frottant l’une contre l’autre en présence d’aluminium fondu.

To select surface treatments, one must account for the required functional properties, the substrate features and the solicitations the substrate must endure. Certain combinations of these parameters make it difficult to select a single surface treatment, a reason why several successive treatments are preferred. To select them, one needs to determine:

- How to divide the several requests into groups and how to stack up these groups from the substrate to the outer surface, so that each treatment deals with one specific group of requests/properties.

- How to select individual layers for each group of properties.

- How to rank the multi-treatments in terms of relevance for a given application.

In this work, one tries to answer the first and the third questions, by studying the case of aluminium foundry, in which the industrial devices frequently face the following solicitations:

- Thermal stress (thermal fatigue, thermal expansion mismatch).

- Presence of corrosive molten metal.

- Sliding wear.

In the literature, several “standard” architectures are proposed (chapter 3), like a diffusion layer reducing superficial fatigue plus a corrosion barrier layer. A thermal barrier coating is also sometimes proposed.

For each of these architectures, one can select individual treatments. To rank them, one devised a “performance index” for thermal stress (chap.4), which is discussed for two cases:

- For large differences between layer and substrate thermal expansion coefficients, when both are put into contact with a high temperature corrosive medium, the layer may be damaged. One discusses this case by examining the corrosion caused by molten aluminium for a steel substrate coated by anticorrosive chromium nitride doped with aluminium. The layer is produced by physical vapour deposition (chap. 5 – cooperation: Inasmet).

- Repeated fast surface temperature transients can also damage the substrate and/or the layer by thermal fatigue. One conducted thermal fatigue tests with samples of hot work tool steel, respectively untreated, simply borided and protected by a multilayer. In the last case, top coat is yttria stabilised zirconia, followed by a nickel superalloy and then a borided layer (undercoat). One synthesized the zirconia coating by plasma spray and one modelled the thermal fatigue (chap. 6).

In chap. 7, architectures from chap. 2 are introduced in a multi-treatment selection routine, which is applied in two cases:

- Foundry moulds for molten aluminium, withstanding both thermal fatigue and corrosion. The devised performance index is extrapolated beyond the tests of chap. 5 and 6 to treatments for this industrial application, thereby quantifying their respective merits.

- A foundry device exposed to molten metal and sliding wear.

Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Some software development teams regard software performance measurement as a mere luxury. When it happens, it often tends to be infrequent, insufficient and subjective. Countless software projects were sent into an uncontrollable spiral of poor management and unsatisfactory results. By revisiting old ideas and policies, many companies have turned themselves around. To ensure that software engineering does the same, technologies and procedures have to be reevaluated. The fact that many companies have decided to cut costs on technology expenditure necessitates software development teams to look for alternative options for deploying high performance software systems. As many companies are moving into the electronic era and evolving to the next stage of evolution, electronic commerce, the more important it has become to apply these concepts on Internet development projects and procedures. The Internet market has shown that two software providers are aiming for worldwide domination of Internet server deployment, being Microsoft and Apache. Currently, the Apache web server is the most commonly used server on the Internet today (60%), with Microsoft's Internet Information Server (25%) in a strong second place. The need for higher throughput and better services is getting more with each passing day. It increases the pressure on these two software vendors to provide the best architecture for their clients' needs. This study intends to provide the reader with an objective view of a basic performance comparison between these two products and tries to find a correlation between the performance tests and the products' popularity standings. The tests for this study were performed on identical hardware architectures with one difference, being the operating system. By comparing the costly proprietary Microsoft solution with its cheaper open source rival, Linux, certain opinions were tested. Would a product developed by a software company that invests millions of dollars in their products perform better than this free-for-all solution, or would the selfless inputs of hundreds of developers all over the world finally payoff through the creation of the world's best Internet server? The results of these tests were evaluated through formal statistical methods, providing overall comparisons of several common uses of web servers. These results were implemented in a small field test to prove the findings in practice with some interesting outcomes in terms of supportive technologies, new rapid application development (RAD) tools and data access models. This research in itself will not change the mind of any Internet programmer. What it hopes to achieve is to demonstrate software engineers that current processes and methods of developing software are not always the right way of doing things. Furthermore, it highlights many important factors often ignored or overlooked while managing software projects. Change management, process re-engineering and risk management form crucial elements of software development projects. By not adhering to certain critical elements of software development, software projects stand the chance of not reaching their goals and could even fail completely. Performance measurement acts as a tool for software engineering, providing guidelines for technological decisions, project management and ultimately, project success.
Dissertation (MSc (Computer Science))--University of Pretoria, 2005.
Computer Science
unrestricted

碩士
國立臺北科技大學
能源與冷凍空調工程系
106
Taiwans electricity market is often in short supply situation, and the dramatic changes in international energy prices, so that the awareness of energy conservation is gradually rising. The Energy Services Company (ESCO) is also actively partcipate in various government energy conservation policies, the performance measurement and verification (M&V) technology has become a key issue. The M&V projects are increasingly valued, resulting in a large increase in the number of executions. This is in line with the rise of the Internet of Things concept in recent years and the trend of big data analysis brought about by cloud-based communication technology, how to improve the traditional processing of data and increase project execution speed and verification work efficiency is currently the domestic focus. Therefore, in this paper, several high-use measurement and verification methods will be written in Excel VBA as a simple operating software. The purpose is to simplify the calculation process, avoid unnecessary errors, and reduce the adaptation period of the related personnel, can quickly understand the use of the software, and to achieve accurate calculations, but also to realize remote real-time monitoring and long-term database establishment and conservation of energy conservation.

M.B.A
The performance of project delivery in the software development domain has a poor history of successes. This research focused on identifying some of the reasons for this poor performance for software development projects in order to propose a possible framework for measuring and evaluating a software development project's performance. The proposed framework is intended to link individual project performance into the strategic performance measurements for an organisation and hence includes the aspect of being able to evaluate an individual project's performance relative to other projects within a programme, organisation or industry. The research was conducted through in-depth interviews and literature studies. The following three Key findings resulted from this study: • Firstly that unless an organisation establishes upfront what the intended use of the measurements is, as well as how they as an organisation and project define "project success" in terms of their overall objectives, any measurements taken will be oflittle value. • Secondly that there is still strong support for the generic measurements of Time, Cost, and Quality all within good customer relations, however, these need to take into account the aspects of project complexity, project management skills, the team fit and the accuracy of the estimates. • Thirdly that the ultimate framework adopted by an organisation for measuring and evaluating project performance should be simple without being simplistic and hence should be generic and easy to implement across a broad range of projects.

Many good software practices are often discarded because of the syndrome “there is not enough time, do it later”, or “it is in our head and there is no time to write it down.” As a consequence, projects are late, time frames to complete software modules are unrealistic and miscalculated, and traceability to required documents and their respective stakeholders do not exist. It is not until the release of the application that it is determined the functionalities do not meet the expectations of the end users and stakeholders. The effect of this can be detrimental to the individuals of the development team and the organization. Associating measurement and metrics to internal software processes and tasks, followed by analysis and continual evaluation, are key elements to close many of the repeated gaps in the life cycle of software engineering, regardless of the software methodology. This report presents a usability case study of a customized application during its development. The application contains internal indicator modules for performance measurement processes captured at the level of a Request System application within a horizontal organizational group. The main goals for the usability surveys and case study were (1st) to identify, define and evaluate the current gaps in the system and (2nd) find new approaches and strategies with the intent to move the project in the right direction. Gaps identified throughout the development process are included as indicators for process improvement. The result of the usability case study creates new goals and gives clear direction to the project. Goal-driven measurements and the creation of a new centralized collaborative web system for communication with other teams are parts of the solution. The processes and techniques may provide benefits to companies interested in applying similar tactics to improve their own software project processes.
text

M. Tech. Business Information Systems
The technological world is emerging and advancing rapidly. Organisations aspire to meet their business goals and strategic objectives. IT projects have the ability to enable organisations meet their business goals and objectives hence organisations invest a lot of time and money on implementing them. The increasing need for organisations to use technology has made organisations implement IT projects. IT projects are implemented to achieve efficiency and effectiveness that is crucial in achieving business goals and strategic objectives. Other benefits include, improved and increased customer satisfaction, improved growth and development within the teams and competitive advantage. Despite an increase in studies on the performance metrics for IT project success in organisations, IT projects still fail. Many IT Projects are considered failed when they are not delivered on time, not delivered within budget, and when the delivered solution does not meet the business requirements. This research study aimed at determining the performance metrics for IT project success within a financial organisation

Java Performance Measurement Framework (JPMF) is a framework dedicated to description of points, where the performance is measured. This description is used to gather performance data in these running points. Data are gathered and written without any processing. The handling increases bandwidth and puts high load on the storage. JPMF does not provide any possibility for user to reduce this data. This thesis aims to solve the described problem by introduction of filtering and aggregation, that should reduce the bandwidth. Additionally, performance bottlenecks in various parts of JPMF are investigated and removed. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

碩士
世新大學
企業管理研究所(含碩專班)
97
According to the Worldwide CMMI Implementation Report issued by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at the Carnegie Melon University up to September 2008, there have been 111 organizations implementing CMMI are certified in Taiwan and it was ranked the seventh in the world. From another angle, Taiwan can be ranked the first in the world if we consider the population density in. Whereas, there has not been sufficient evidences showing how those organizations performed after being certified by CMMI. This research is based on the data of the public listed Information Service Companies between 2002 and 2008 taken from Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) and those who have been certified on Level 3 of CMMI from the CMMI Project website from the Bureau of Industries of the Ministry of Economy. This research covers 12 organizations who have, or not, being certified by CMMI. The research is to analyze the efficiency value based on the BBC model of DEA. Four different approaches are to be made for Mann-Whitney U statistics. In each approach, we will try to utilize three combinations with different inputs and outputs. The purpose of this research is to create a useful reference for the government on CMMI implementation. It can also be a reference for those organizations who intend to implement CMMI in the future. The research leads us to the conclusion that being certified by CMMI Level 3 is not related to the efficiency improvement in those organizations and the possible reason could be most of them are certified in recent years and there has not been sufficient time for them to show the performance.

The past decade has brought about unparalleled changes to the field of Marketing. The advancements in Information Technology, the explosion of data available, and the need to make decisions based on intelligence gathered through the analysis of this data, along with increasing competition and the need for businesses to scale rapidly, have created a complex and dynamic environment that puts an unprecedented pressure on marketers to prove their value to their firms. Whereas in the past marketers were rarely held accountable for their actions, the new business landscape provides more possibilities than ever to measure the performance of Marketing activities, activities which are, simultaneously, prone to consistent improvement due to the advent of Marketing Automation software. Previous literature has described what are the main obstacles to reach this accountability, but research lags in characterizing the impact Marketing Automation has on the performance measurement of Marketing activities. As such, the present study seeks to clearly outline the challenges associated with reaching accountability in Marketing, as well as to describe the role of Marketing Automation inside organizations, in order to provide an overview of the impact the implementation of Marketing Automation software has on the measurement of Marketing activity performance. Through careful research of the elements that characterize the phenomenon under study, the present paper ultimately contributes to the better understanding of the issue of Marketing accountability within the current business paradigm.
A última década trouxe mudanças sem paralelo ao campo do Marketing. Os avanços em Tecnologias de Informação, a explosão de data disponível, e a necessidade de tomar decisões com base na análise dessa mesma data, a par com níveis de competição em constante aumento e a necessidade dos negócios crescerem rapidamente, criaram um ambiente dinâmico e complexo que coloca sobre os praticantes de Marketing uma pressão nunca antes sentida para provarem o seu valor às suas respetivas empresas. Ao passo que no passado, os marketers raramente eram responsabilizados pelas suas ações, o novo paradigma empresarial oferece mais possibilidades do que nunca para a medição da performance de atividades de Marketing, atividades que são, simultaneamente, propensas a ser constantemente melhoradas devido ao advento dos softwares de Automação de Marketing. Literatura anterior descreveu quais são os maiores obstáculos no que toca a atingir esta responsabilidade, mas a pesquisa retarda em caracterizar o impacto que a implementação de Automação de Marketing tem na medição da performance das atividades de Marketing dentro das empresas. Assim, o presente estudo procura claramente definir os desafios relacionados com a responsabilidade em Marketing, bem como descrever o papel da Automação de Marketing dentro das empresas, de forma a fornecer uma visão geral que o impacto da Automação de Marketing tem na medição da performance das atividades de Marketing. Através de pesquisa meticulosa dos elementos que caracterizam o fenómeno sobre estudo, o presente trabalho contribui, em última análise, para uma melhor compreensão da questão de responsabilidade em Marketing dentro do atual paradigma empresarial.

The Catalyst 6500 is a modern commercial switch, capable of processing millions of packets per second through the utilization of specialized hardware. One of the main hardware components aiding the switch in performing its task is the Ternary Content Addressable Memory (TCAM). TCAMs update themselves with data relevant to routing and switching based on the traffic flowing through the switch. This enables the switch to forward future packets destined to a location that has already been previously discovered - at a very high speed. The problem is TCAMs have a limited size, and once they reach their capacity, the switch has to rely on software to perform the switching and routing - a much slower process than performing Hardware Switching that utilizes the TCAM. A framework has been developed to analyze the switch’s performance once the TCAM has reached its capacity, as well as measure the penalty associated with a cache miss. This thesis concludes with some recommendations and future work.

Productivity improvement in the software industry is one of the major challenges facing many software development companies in this century. Most companies have adopted agile methodologies in order to profit from the benefits claimed for them. Agile methodologies are characterised by frequent software delivery, short feedback loops, quicker response to change, and problem identification earlier in the development process. The agile approach has been recognised as paving a way for companies to acquire higher software productivity, delivering good-quality and cost-effective software, enabling software development companies to respond to business challenges with their demands for high quality, high performance and high development speed in delivering the final product. For companies that adopt agile methodologies, understanding the factors that influence their teams’ software development productivity is a challenging task for management and practitioners today. In this research, an analysis is presented that identifies productivity factors that affect agile teams. It is a study of agile methods to identify common agile practices and/or values that have impact on productivity, and describes suitable metrics that could be used to measure agile team productivity. A qualitative research approach was used, and the case study was chosen as the research strategy. Two South African companies that are located in two different provinces and that adopted agile methodologies in their software development, were selected for the case studies. Qualitative content analysis was used in the research to permit subjective interpretation of factors that influence agile team productivity, and to analyse to what extent these factors affected productivity. This research has shown that an understanding of the factors that influence an agile team’s productivity gives significant insight into the way agile teams work, motivates team members to work together, and leads to uniform metrics in tracking each team’s progress. The study indicates that tracking an agile team’s work and providing adequate tools needed to execute their tasks results in improving agile team productivity. It should be recognised that using metrics to measure performance in agile teams is helpful in creating a team’s culture and trust. In this study, it was found that the factors identified in both literature and case studies affected productivity in the two companies under study, both positively and negatively. The study also found that applying the correct metrics in assessing, analysing and reviewing an agile team’s performance is important when monitoring productivity. Successful software delivery is only possible if individuals are committed to their work, are provided with the necessary tools and have access to a stable working environment. In addition, individual factors such as knowledge, skills, abilities, personalities and experience should be considered when forming agile teams. Consideration of these factors will result in grouping people that are able to work together and achieve a common goal, which is important in improving productivity. A conceptual framework for agile team productivity was proposed. The discussion of the findings is presented in more detail in this research.
School of Computing
M.Sc. (Computing)

There exist numerous approaches to index either spatio-temporal or high-dimensional data. None of them is able to efficiently index hybrid data types, thus spatio-temporal and high-dimensional data. As the best high-dimensional indexing techniques are only able to index point-data and not now-relative data and the best spatio-temporal indexing techniques suffer from the curse of dimensionality, this thesis introduces the Spatio-Temporal Pyramid Adapter (STPA). The STPA maps spatio-temporal data on points, now-values on the median of the data set and indexes them with the pyramid technique. For high-dimensional and spatio-temporal index structures no generally accepted benchmark exists. Most index structures are only evaluated by custom benchmarks and compared to a tiny set of competitors. Benchmarks may be biased as a structure may be created to perform well in a certain benchmark or a benchmark does not cover a certain speciality of the investigated structures. In this thesis, the Interface Based Performance Comparison (IBPC) technique is introduced. It automatically generates test sets with a high code coverage on the system under test (SUT) on the basis of all functions defined by a certain interface which all competitors support. Every test set is performed on every SUT and the performance results are weighted by the achieved coverage and summed up. These weighted performance results are then used to compare the structures. An implementation of the IBPC, the Performance Test Automation Framework (PTAF) is compared to a classic custom benchmark, a workload generator whose parameters are optimized by a genetic algorithm and a specific PTAF alternative which incorporates the specific behavior of the systems under test. This is done for a set of two high-dimensional spatio-temporal indices and twelve variants of the R-tree. The evaluation indicates that PTAF performs at least as good as the other approaches in terms of minimal test cases with a maximized coverage. Several case studies on PTAF demonstrate its widespread abilities.