Abstract

The adoption of Distributed Web Systems (DWS) into modern engineering design process has dramatically increased in recent years. The Engineering Design Guide and Environment (EDGE) is one such DWS, intended to provide an integrated set of tools for use in the development of new products and services. Previous attempts to improve the efficiency and scalability of DWS focused largely on hardware utilization (i.e. multithreading and virtualization) and software scalability (i.e. load balancing and cloud services). However, these techniques are often limited to analysis of the computational complexity of the algorithms implemented.

This work seeks to improve the understanding of efficiency and scalability of DWS by modelling the dynamics of information flow and resource utilization by characterizing DWS workloads through historical usage data (i.e. request type, frequency, access time). The design and implementation of EDGE is described. A DWS model of an EDGE system is developed and validated against theoretical limiting cases. The DWS model is used to predict the throughput of an EDGE system given a resource allocation and workflow. Results of the simulation suggest that proposed DWS designs can be evaluated according to the usage requirements of an engineering firm, ultimately guiding an informed decision for the selection and deployment of a DWS in an enterprise environment. Recommendations for future work related to the continued development of EDGE, DWS modelling of EDGE installation environments, and the extension of DWS modelling to new product development processes are presented.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

New products; Engineering design--Mathematical models

Publication Date

8-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Computer Engineering (MS)

Department, Program, or Center

Computer Engineering (KGCOE)

Advisor

Edward Hensel

Advisor/Committee Member

Muhammad Shaaban

Advisor/Committee Member

Andres Kwasinski

Comments

Physical copy available from RIT's Wallace Library at TS170 .M49 2016

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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