Patent ID: 8174990

Claim:
A method for measuring performance of a target system comprising a cluster of computing nodes, the method comprising: retrieving, by a processor of a measuring system communicating with the cluster, a metric definition from a declarative metrics specification stored on the measuring system, wherein the metric definition includes a metric operable on data resulting from execution of a same computer application on at least two of the computing nodes, the metric including an equation for combining the data into an aggregate metric; obtaining, by the processor, a list of at least two of the computing nodes that are currently assigned to the metric definition from a database that resides on the measuring system; generating, by the processor, a metric set including the equation and at least two elements corresponding to the at least two computing nodes, wherein each element includes a data collection function that collects part of the data from the corresponding computing node; and calculating, by the processor, the aggregate metric based on the equation and the collected parts of the data, wherein the equation calculates an average number of invocations of the computer application across the at least two computing nodes.