Scaling for E-Business

9.1. Introduction

There are many types of performance models and various analytic solution techniques in the literature [6] [10]. What makes one solution technique different from another? How does one select a solution method that is well-suited for a specific modeling problem? These are questions that might be intriguing the reader. Simplicity, accuracy, computational cost, and availability of information about the system under analysis are some of the issues to be considered when choosing a solution technique. The modeling approach used in this book favors simplicity, so that the user can understand the model and use it to uncover essential aspects of actual systems.

This chapter starts by introducing very simple models. Complexity is progressively ...