TY - CHAP PB - IEEE T2 - Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis & Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS) TI - Approximate mean value analysis of process algebra models SP - 369 A1 - Tribastone, Mirco UR - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6005381&isnumber=6005352 AV - none Y1 - 2011/07// EP - 378 SN - 978-1-4577-0468-0 ID - eprints2581 N2 - Studying the existence of product forms of performance models described with compositional techniques is of central importance since this may lead to particularly efficient solution methods. This paper considers a class of models in the stochastic process algebra PEPA which do not enjoy the exact product form solutions available in the literature. However, they can be interpreted as queueing networks with service vacations and multiple resource possession, which have been shown to admit accurate analytical approximations based on mean value analysis. Special attention is devoted to situations where the use of the competing approximate method based on ordinary differential equations may be questionable due to the presence of components with few replicas. ER -