Techniques are disclosed for automatically determining one or more configuration parameters associated with one or more programs executable by a computing system. For example, in a system including at least one application and at least one parameter which affects a behavior of the at least one application, a method for determining a frequency for invoking the at least one application includes the following steps. The method estimates a cost which includes overhead resulting from invoking the at least one application. The method estimates an improvement in the behavior resulting from modifying the at least one parameter based on invoking the at least one application. The method selects the frequency based on the cost and the improvement.