Petri nets for performance modelling study of client-server systems

Client-server computing provides many corporations with the ability to build scalable, adaptive and cost-effective information systems. However, to design and implement an effective client-server system is not an easy job. The complexity due to the inherent heterogeneity in client-server platforms makes the performance evaluation an important issue. The main purpose of this paper is to provide an analytical model to evaluate the performance of a client-server system before it is implemented. It is shown in this paper that the Petri net model is a powerful technique used to study the client-server system performance. Besides using a numerical example to illustrate the solution procedure of the Petri net model, a case study is also given to show the applicability of the developed analytical model. This research concludes that, with the assistance of some software packages, the Petri nets are very useful tools for the information system manager to analyse a client-server system and to decide the appropriate configuration thereafter.