Pushmodeller

Pushmodeller is a term used to describe a class of modelling approaches and tools for push-based dataflow systems, where producers push data into channels toward consumers, rather than requiring explicit requests from consumers. The goal is to analyze and reason about performance, correctness, and resource usage in event-driven and streaming architectures.

Core concepts include components (producers, channels, and consumers), push interfaces, timing and ordering assumptions, and policies for buffering, backpressure, and data drops. Models describe how data is produced, transmitted, and consumed, along with the timing constraints and ordering guarantees.

Capabilities include simulation of workloads, evaluation of throughput and latency, verification of properties such as bounded buffers and absence of deadlock, and visualization of dataflow graphs and metrics. Tools may support exploring backpressure strategies, windowing, and fault tolerance.

Implementation and use: there is no single canonical implementation. Research prototypes and commercial tools adopt pushmodeller concepts as discrete-event simulations, DSLs, or extensions to existing dataflow engines. Models can be exported or integrated with experiment pipelines and may interoperate with standard data formats.

Applications: useful for comparing push-based versus pull-based designs, guiding resource provisioning, and communicating architecture decisions to stakeholders.

Limitations: models abstract real systems and rely on assumptions about workloads and timing; results depend on chosen parameters and can be sensitive to modelling choices; scalability may be limited in very large systems.

Related topics include dataflow modeling, streaming architectures, backpressure, and discrete-event simulation.