Techniques for improving Web application performance in bandwidth constrained scenarios

Author(s):  
A.V. Mahajan ◽  
A.A. Yarra
2009 ◽  
pp. 324-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Xie

Mobile technologies are rapidly changing our lives with increasing numbers of services supported by mobile devices, including Web-based learning applications, providing opportunities for people to study anytime and anywhere. However, using Web-based mobile applications to present learning resources is a challenge for developers because the performance of the mobile Internet over GPRS networks is often unacceptably slow. A new Web development model, Ajax, may help to address this problem. Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML), is an approach to Web application development that uses client-side scripting to reduce traffic between client and server and provide a seamless user application experience. In this chapter, we address the question of whether mobile Ajax provides measurable performance advantages over non-Ajax mobile learning applications. An empirical study was undertaken to measure mobile learning application performance over a GPRS network, comparing an Ajax application and an active server pages (ASP) application with identical functionality. Our results suggest that mobile Ajax can reduce the bandwidth requirement by around 70 percent, and cut the server’s response time in half. In addition, these performance improvements were noticed by users in our small group usability test.


Author(s):  
Dmytro O. Kovaliuk ◽  
Oleh O. Kovaliuk ◽  
Olga Y. Pinaieva ◽  
Andrzej Kotyra ◽  
Aliya Kalizhanova

Information ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 319
Author(s):  
Denys Klochkov ◽  
Jan Mulawka

The evolution of web development and web applications has resulted in creation of numerous tools and frameworks that facilitate the development process. Even though those frameworks make web development faster and more efficient, there are certain downsides to using them. A decrease in application performance when using an “off the shelf” framework might be a crucial disadvantage, especially given the vital role web application response time plays in user experience. This contribution focuses on a particular framework—Ruby on Rails. Once the most popular framework, it has now lost its leading position, partially due to slow performance metrics and response times, especially in larger applications. Improving and expanding upon the previous work in this field, an attempt to improve the response time of a specially developed benchmark application is made. This is achieved by performing optimizations that can be roughly divided into two groups. The first group concerns the frontend improvements, which include: adopting the client-side rendering, JavaScript Document Object Model (DOM) manipulation and asynchronous requests. Another group can be described as the backend improvements, which include implementing intelligent, granular caching, disabling redundant modules, as well as profiling and optimizing database requests and reducing database access inefficiencies. Those improvements resulted in overall up to 74% decreased page loading times, with perceived application performance being improved above this mark due to the adoption of a client-side rendering strategy. Using the different metrics of application performance measurements, each of the improvement steps is evaluated with regards to its effect on different aspects of overall performance. In conclusion, this work presents a way to significantly decrease the response time of a particular Ruby on Rails application and simultaneously provide a better user experience. Even though the majority of this process is specific to Rails, similar steps can be taken to improve applications implemented with the use of other similar frameworks. As the result of the work, a groundwork is laid for the development of the tool that could assist the developers in improving their applications as well.


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