with AHP
Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)
To Identify Performance Scenarios for Enterprise Applications
Prepared by;
Sena Aksoy &
Cansu Bulat
Ergonomics,
03/12/2010
What is the AHP?
The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a quantitative
technique for multiple criteria decision making. It
provides a convenient way to quantify the qualitative
aspects thus eliminating subjectivity in the outcome.
The technique begins by clearly identifying the
objectives, criteria and alternatives for a given problem
situation. For each of the criteria (qualitative or
quantitative) a vector is created that gives the relative
ranking of its alternatives. Weights of the criterias are
determined from the problem context. These inputs
are then used to relatively rank the alternatives.
Using AHP in performance modeling
• The success of any performance modeling exercise hinges on
verification of the target systems architecture using a set of
performance scenarios. In determining the performance scenarios,
it is required to rank the application workloads based on these
multiple criterions.
Step 1: Determine and Rank the Criterions for the Application Context
Once the criteria values for scenarios are available, the next step is to compute the relative ranks
of the application workloads for each criterion. For quantitative criteria scenario ranks are
derived by normalizing their values, to make them comparable with other criteria values.
However, for qualitative criteria, AHP advocates pair-wise comparison of scenarios. If there are
"n" scenarios and "m" qualitative criterions then (n* (n-1)/2) * m user inputs would be
required. For an application with just 10 scenarios and 1 criterion, 45 inputs from users need
be taken. Since most applications consist of a large number of application scenarios and
multiple criteria, getting inputs from the user for pair-wise comparison may not be feasible.
Alternatively, AHP recommends the ratings approach. According to this, a scale of intensities (i.e.
low, medium, high) is established for qualitative criteria like business criticality or resource
intensiveness. Pair-wise comparison of these intensities is done to get the relative
importance of one over another and their relative ranks are computed. Then user rates the
scenarios on these scales of intensities for the corresponding criteria [EPA 2002]. These scale
intensities are then replaced by their priorities for further processing. Thus only n*m+ (i*(i-
1)/2)*m (where i is the number of scale intensities for m criteria) user inputs would be
required. For the case described above, the number of user inputs required for pair-wise
comparison would be 3, besides the scale ratings of scenarios for each criterion.
Methodology for Identification of
Performance Scenario using AHP
For the camera example discussed above, the ranking for style criterion, which is
qualitative, is computed as follows using the ratings approach.
Methodology for Identification of
Performance Scenario using AHP
Step 3: Compute overall ranking of Application Scenarios using cost-benefit analysis.
• In the first two steps, the scenario ranks for each criterion and criteria weights have
been computed. In step three, we will aggregate the scenario ranks for all cost and
benefit criterions separately. In the camera example, the overall ranks of the options is
obtained by taking the ratio of their benefit and cost ranks.
The final step is computation of an overall rank for scenarios by taking the ratio of
their benefit and cost ranks [Saaty 1994]. The scenarios with higher values of ratio
are selected.
Case Study
• In this section we present the re-engineering of a shipment
application. The existing application had performance problems and
needed to support a substantial increase in workload due to
business requirements. Performance modeling was initiated for the
new application architecture.
Additional scenarios from other workloads (batch, message and report printing, etc)
can be picked having high values of benefit/cost ratio. Using the same process, the
different workload types resulted in selection of the performance scenarios as shown
in table 5.
Conclusion
The AHP methodology described in this article can facilitate
and accelerate the selection of the most valuable
performance scenarios. This can focus performance modeling
on a key few performance critical scenarios, rather than
evaluating hundreds of applications scenarios. Some critical
factors for choosing performance scenarios have been
suggested. However, more criteria can be taken into account
based on system, user and business requirements. By
following the outline of the steps described, selection of
performance scenarios can be made more objectively, based
on scientific method of AHP.