Software Engineering Institute

This report describes the use of prediction-enabled component technology (PECT) as a means of packaging predictable assembly as a deployable product. A PECT results from integrating a component technology with one or more analysis technologies. Analysis technologies allow analysis and prediction of assembly-level properties prior to component assembly, and, presumably, prior to component acquisition. Analysis technologies also identify required component properties and their certifiable descriptions. This report describes the major structures of a PECT. It then discusses the means of validating the predictive powers of a PECT so that consumers may obtain measurably bounded trust in design-time predictions. Last, it demonstrates the above concepts in a simple but illustrative model problem: predicting average end-to-end latency of a soft real-time application built from off-the-shelf software components.