PERFORMANCE to Improve the Performance Many Things Must Be Considered
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
CHAPTER FIVE PERFORMANCE To improve the performance many things must be considered. The web portal must avoid the system downtimes. Different types of the web servers are available in the market. Selection of the web server must be done after considering the server limitations and the needs of the web portal. Most of the time some assumptions are made about the client machine, but to make the robust web portal all the Client side limitations (e.g., communication media limitations or availability of devices like printer, speaker, etc.) must be considered. The most important point about the performance is speed optimization which can be achieved by Task scheduling. Different types of tools are available in the market as per the reQuirements for the Load and Performance Measurement. 5 PERFORMANCE 5.1 Introduction The software products undergo several cycles of alpha and beta tests and receive feedback from the users before they are distributed as a final product. The alpha and beta versions are given to the users and users suggest changes, which are reflected in the final product. If the software is fully customized then different modules are prepared and these models are installed on the user machines and users are asked to use the modules. Dynamic Content Caching (Centralized or Distributed) is used to improve the performance. The End-Users may struggle in the identification and manipulation of variables. The Modelling Web Applications Compare the modelling components using non-object oriented languages, and Compare the modelling components using object-oriented languages. Most commonly used model components are Script, Mark up, Style Sheet, Schema, Data languages, and Object-Oriented languages. 5.2 Portal Configuration The configuration of the portal (Changes in the portal from a minimal configuration to a maximal configuration) In order to maintain the performance the configuration must be checked time to time. This is mandatory if the changes in the web portal are very freQuent and it increase overhead on the server. There is plenty of software available in the market to monitor the network and load of the server. It ensures the availability of network components while also measuring traffic and usage. It saves costs by avoiding outages, optimizing connections, saving time and controlling service level agreements. 123 Optimize Network and Avoid System Downtimes Now a day’s business increasingly depends upon their networks to move large amount of data, provide faster communication, and enable basic operations. Performance loss or system crash or delay in providing data can seriously impact the bottom line of the business. Continuous network and server monitoring enable to find problems and resolve them before they become a serious threat to the business; o Try to avoid bandwidth and server performance bottlenecks o Always deliver better Quality of service to the users by being proactive o Reduce costs by having bandwidth and hardware based on actual load o Increase profits by avoiding losses caused by undetected system failures o Take a routine review on the process to cross check that the web portal works smoothly. o Pay attention to the smallest suggestion given by the user. 5.3 Server side limitations The selection of the web server must be appropriate. There are many type of the web servers are available in the market, which are based on different reQuirement and or for different type of the technology; for example, o Apache web server - the HTTP web server - This web server is Free and the most popular web server in the world developed by the Apache Software Foundation. Apache web server is open source software and can be installed and made to work on almost all operating systems including Linux, UNIX, Windows, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and more. o Apache Tomcat -- The Apache Tomcat has been developed to support servlet and JSP scripts. Though it can serve as a standalone server, Tomcat is generally used along with the popular Apache HTTP web server or any other web server. Apache Tomcat is free and open source and can run on different operating systems like Linux, UNIX, Windows, Mac OS X, and Free BSD. 124 o Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) Windows Server -- IIS Windows Web Server has been developed by the software giant, Microsoft. It offers higher levels of performance and security than its predecessors. It also comes with a good support from the company and is the second most popular server on the web. o Nginx web server -- Free open source popular web server including IMAP/P0P3 proxy server. Hosting about 7.5% of all domains worldwide, Nginx is known for its high performance, stability, simple configuration and low resource usage. This web server doesn't use threads to handle reQuests rather a much more scalable event-driven architecture which uses small and predictable amounts of memory under load. o Lighttpd - Lighttpd is a free web server distributed with the FreeBSD operating system. This open source web server is fast, secure and consumes much less CPU power. Lighttpd can also run on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris operating systems. o Jigsaw -- Jigsaw (W3C's Server) comes from the World Wide Web group. It is open source and free and can run on various platforms like Linux, UNIX, Windows, Mac OS X, Free BSD etc. Jigsaw has been written in Java and can run CGI scripts and PHP programs. o Klone - Klone includes a web server and an SDK for creating static and dynamic web sites. It is a web application development framework especially for embedded systems and appliances. No additional components are reQuired when using Klone; thus, one can do away with an HTTP/S server or the active pages engine (PHP, Perl, and ASP). o Abyss web server - Abyss compact web server runs on all popular platforms - Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD. Supports HTTP/1.1, secure connections, CGI / FastCGI, custom error pages, password protection and 125 much more. The server also has an automatic anti-hacking system and a multi lingual remote web management interface. o Oracle Web Tier -- Includes two web server options with reverse proxy and caching solutions that lead to Quick serving of web pages and easy handling of even the most demanding http traffic. The iPlanet Web Server, for example, is a high-performance server with enhanced security and multi-threaded architecture that scales well on modern 64-bit multiprocessors. o X5 (Xitami) web server -- The cross-platform X5 from iMatrix Corporation is the latest generation web server using the company's own multithreading technology (Base2) that makes it scalable to multi cores. As per the iMatrix. X5 can handle thousands of connections without difficulty and thus is useful for long polling in which connections from clients remain open for extended durations. o Zeus web server — The Zeus web server runs on Linux and Free BSD operating systems among others. It has been developed by Zeus technology Ltd. And it is known forats speed, reliability, security and flexibility. The web server is used on some of the busiest web sites of the world including Ebay. Detail information can be found at http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/hosting/list of web servers.php3 5.4 Services of the Portal The services of the portal are always increases. After the portal is made available to the user to use; the changes demanded by the user. This happens mainly because the user was not able to visualize the entire system as a whole process and the links it has with the other applications. Apart from the standard search engine feature, web portals offer many other services such as e-mail, news, stock prices, information, advertises, links to many other web 126 applications, facilities provides, databases and entertainment. Portals provide a way for enterprises to provide a consistent look and feel with access control and procedures for multiple applications and databases, which otherwise would have been different entities altogether. Although the system discussed with the user prior to the development as well as during the development; the user was not able imagine the entire process which finally going to be combined. That is the portal present information from diverse sources in a unified way. Most of the time the reQuirement is provided by the people who does not involve in day to day activities of the system, and the people who expected to use the system are not able to provide the proper reQuirement. As a result the services are not as expected by the user. Or some time if it fit to the expectation then user starts asking advance facilities. They can not imagine time and efforts reQuirement of such type of the cost. If the reQuests from the user are very small i.e. it reQuires some changes in the layout or to add any small function then the portal can easily modified. But some time the changes demanded may be very high and it reQuired changes right from the database structure then the entire portal has to be altered. If the changes in the web pages are large or complicated then also it reQuire huge amount of changes in the portal. So when the portal has designed always consider more number of services and according to that portal must have the bigger configuration. The hardware must support the more services / applications. Further information can be found at http://www.webopedia.com. 127 5.5 Client side limitations (communication media limitations, printer) The ultimate success and full users satisfaction of a web portal depends upon many factors. o Some time the web application is depends upon the client side support, For example, enabling the cookies, proper installation of the reQuired software to run the web application smoothly this is major problem if the web application will run different types of animation files on the client machine, proper installation of the hardware like printer, etc.