Using Green Software Expertyzer
Resource-efficient or sustainable software development can best be illustrated using an analogy:
You have to get from point A to point B tomorrow and, unfortunately, you don’t have your new electric car yet, and must instead resort to using a car with an old combustion engine. Public transport is not an option because of multiple transfers and unreliable connections. So how do you minimize the otherwise inevitable carbon footprint? You consider whether an online meeting can maybe replace the face-to-face meeting. If that’s not an option, you schedule more time to avoid lead-footing and to optimize your average speed at a moderate level to avoid excessive fuel consumption. Experience shows that this is still the smartest way to drive (by the way: e-car production also consumes energy, and even that is currently only marginally green).
The principle behind this: The hardware (in this case, the car) does not consume energy by itself, autonomously. Hardware is produced to fulfill a purpose and is controlled by something or someone that has a significant impact on consumption and the carbon footprint. It’s the same with computer hardware. Sure, it’s ultimately the hardware that causes emissions. But the business purpose and the software are the reason for the hardware’s existence and it defines the energy consumption of the hardware. Software needs more or less CPU cycles, memory, storage, network bandwidth. The question you need to ask here is: How do I get off the IT lead foot and optimize my software resource consumption? The answer: Green Software Design.
Green Software Design describes the approach of developing sustainable software. And this approach is something completely new for the vast majority of software developers. Especially when it comes to distributed systems and business software, but also – to a lesser degree – to standalone applications. To enable you a “greener insight” into these aspects, Syngenio designed and launched the Green Software Expertyzer.
The Green Software Expertyzer is a web application that leads the user through a series of structured questions on software architecture, design and procedures of a distributed application and grades this application. In the background, a configurable knowledge base is constantly learning as we refine the AI in order to
- communicate where the starting points for resource-saving software lie
- simulate, even before the development of software, how architectural alternatives, design decisions and procedures affect the resource consumption of the software and thus the CO2 footprint
- stimulate discussions and provide feedback to complement and improve the criteria
- provide an audit tool for green software design
The Green Software Expertyzer is designed as a web application. You can access this application in the browser of your computer or smartphone. On the home page, you can first learn more about how the Green Software Expertyzer works and register before you are guided through a series of structured questions – These range from the sizing of the application to be evaluated, to the architecture, design (programming language, frameworks), operations, and green benefits of the application. As you answer the questions, you can provide feedback on the questions in separate input boxes.
Upon completing the questions, your answers are evaluated and ranked in efficiency classes from E to A+++ along with an on-screen, short-form analysis of the result – a more detailed version is then sent to you as a PDF download link by mail.