Patent ID: 7703079

Claim:
A method for predicting an overall system performance change based on changes to an individual component, comprising: inserting a plurality of performance degradations of different magnitude values relative to a baseline value into a component of a software system, wherein the software system comprises a plurality of components; for each inserted performance degradation, measuring a respective overall system performance change corresponding to the inserted performance degradation; constructing a best-fit function for data representing the individual magnitude value of each individual performance degradation related to a value of the overall system performance change resulting from each individual performance degradation; and extrapolating the best-fit function to one or more data points each representing a potential performance improvement and each having a negative value as opposed to the magnitude values for the performance degradations to determine one or more predicted values of expected overall system performance change expected from implementing the one or more respective potential performance improvements to the component without actually implementing the one or more respective potential performance improvements to the component.