Design and Application of the Kieker Framework

Abstract—In addition to studying the construction and evolution of software services, the software engineering discipline needs to address the operation of continuously running software services. A requirement for its robust operation are means for effective monitoring of software runtime behavior. In contrast to profiling for construc-tion activities, monitoring of operational services should only impose a small performance overhead. Furthermore, instrumentation should be non-intrusive to the business logic, as far as possible. We present the Kieker framework for monitoring software runtime behavior, e.g., internal performance or (distributed) trace data. The flexible architecture allows to replace or add framework components, including monitor-ing probes, analysis components, and monitoring recor