One of the historical problems associated with implementing such systems from a mostly business application viewpoint was that the underlying theoretical design framework was usually weak, and designing the system to meet various performance objectives (particularly responsiveness) was relegated to a back seat. Of course, even for business applications today, such an approach is hardly acceptable, but still very widespread.
An Engineering approach, by definition, must be based on a firm and formal modelling foundation that supports performance verification through measurement and feedback into the design process. For Information Systems, many theoretically viable computational models are available, but appropriate selection and integration within a complete modelling methodology is an important aspect.
In the approach to be discussed in this talk, a Petri net type model is used as the foundation - it readily supports the modelling of concurrency
Dr Gary A Bundell The University of Western Australi