Critical issues in the design of large-scale distributed systems

The requirements for the design of large-scale, complex, software-intensive applications include real-time, time-critical, performance, dependability, security, and financial limitations. These requirements have put dramatic burdens on the systems engineers in designing these applications. In order to eliminate the system engineering shortcomings, technology must be developed to: (1) provide a rigorous means for systems engineers to identify and specify the necessary information for the design, (2) provide annotation capabilities for the system design to capture design goals/criteria that relate to the requirements and Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs), and (3) provide mechanisms to optimize the design given the design goals. A framework is described here which provides this ability to assess and optimize system designs and their implementations.