Web page performance analysis

Computer systems play an increasingly crucial and ubiquitous role in human endeavour by carrying out or facilitating tasks and providing information and services. How much work these systems can accomplish, within a certain amount of time, using a certain amount of resources, characterises the systems’ performance, which is a major concern when the systems are planned, designed, implemented, deployed, and evolve. As one of the most popular computer systems, the Web is inevitably scrutinised in terms of performance analysis that deals with its speed, capacity, resource utilisation, and availability. Performance analyses for the Web are normally done from the perspective of the Web servers and the underlying network (the Internet). This research, on the other hand, approaches Web performance analysis from the perspective of Web pages. The performance metric of interest here is response time. Response time is studied as an attribute of Web pages, instead of being considered purely a result of network and server conditions. A framework that consists of measurement, modelling, and monitoring (3Ms) of Web pages that revolves around response time is adopted to support the performance analysis activity. The measurement module enables Web page response time to be measured and is used to support the modelling module, which in turn provides references for the monitoring module. The monitoring module estimates response time. The three modules are used in the software development lifecycle to ensure that developed Web pages deliver at worst satisfactory response time (within a maximum acceptable time), or preferably much better response time, thereby maximising the efficiency of the pages. The framework proposes a systematic way to understand response time as it is related to specific characteristics of Web pages and explains how individual Web page response time can be examined and improved

Hybrid Approach for Website Quality Evaluation: Linear Weightage Model and Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process

In rece~t years, many people have devoted their efforts to the issue of quality of website. The ',concept of quality is consisting of many criteria: quality of service ' perspective, a user perspective, a content perspective or indeed ,a usability perspective. The very spec,ial nature of the web applications and website' pose unique software testing challen'g es. Webmasters, Web applications developers, and Website quality assurance managers need tools and methods that can match up to the new needs. The result of this study confirmed that criteria of website quality consist of eleven criteria I (load time, response time, page rank, frequency of update, traffic,;, design optimization, size, nu mber of ite\ns, accessibility error, markup validation, and broken link). Online diagnostic tools 'provided in the internet can be used to measure V)'ebsite quality related with criteria that' was determined in this research. This decreases the economic and noneconomic cost for conducting website evaluation. Online diagn9stics tools allow the website designer or researcher to evaluate many websites and to detect potential problems as well' as actual problems. This research conducts some tests to measure the ' quality website of Asian countries via web diagnostic tools on.line. The researcher proposes a methqdology for determining and evaluating the best e-government, Asian ' airlines, and Malaysian universities sites based on many criteria, of website quality. Applying Hybrid model between LWM and F AHP approach for website evaluation has resulted in significant acceleration of implementation, raised the overall effectiveness ' with respect to the underlying methodology and ultimately enabled more efficient procedure. The result of this study confirmed most of Asian web~ites are neglecting performance and airlines websites have the best quality performancre based on Hybrid Model Evaluation. According to the results of the evaluation process, Airlines sector has ' the highest average. score compare to e-govemment and university. Keywords:-performance, quality, website, Hybrid model.In compliance with the terms of the Copyright Act 1987 and the IP Policy of the university, the copyright of this thesis has been reassigned by the author to the legal entity of the university, Institute of Technology PETRONAS Sdn Bhd. Due acknowledgement shall always be made of the use of any material contained in, or derived from, this thesis. © Handaru Jati, 2010 Institute of Technology PETRONAS Sdn Bhd All rights reserved. vi

Web modelling for web warehouse design

Tese de doutoramento em Informática (Engenharia Informática), apresentada à Universidade de Lisboa através da Faculdade de Ciências, 2007Users require applications to help them obtaining knowledge from the web. However, the specific characteristics of web data make it difficult to create these applications. One possible solution to facilitate this task is to extract information from the web, transform and load it to a Web Warehouse, which provides uniform access methods for automatic processing of the data. Web Warehousing is conceptually similar to Data Warehousing approaches used to integrate relational information from databases. However, the structure of the web is very dynamic and cannot be controlled by the Warehouse designers. Web models frequently do not reflect the current state of the web. Thus, Web Warehouses must be redesigned at a late stage of development. These changes have high costs and may jeopardize entire projects. This thesis addresses the problem of modelling the web and its influence in the design of Web Warehouses. A model of a web portion was derived and based on it, a Web Warehouse prototype was designed. The prototype was validated in several real-usage scenarios. The obtained results show that web modelling is a fundamental step of the web data integration process.Os utilizadores da web recorrem a ferramentas que os ajudem a satisfazer as suas necessidades de informação. Contudo, as características específicas dos conteúdos provenientes da web dificultam o desenvolvimento destas aplicações. Uma aproximação possível para a resolução deste problema é a integração de dados provenientes da web num Armazém de Dados Web que, por sua vez, disponibilize métodos de acesso uniformes e facilitem o processamento automático. Um Armazém de Dados Web é conceptualmente semelhante a um Armazém de Dados de negócio. No entanto, a estrutura da informação a carregar, a web, não pode ser controlada ou facilmente modelada pelos analistas. Os modelos da web existentes não são tipicamente representativos do seu estado presente. Como consequência, os Armazéns de Dados Web sofrem frequentemente alterações profundas no seu desenho quando já se encontram numa fase avançada de desenvolvimento. Estas mudanças têm custos elevados e podem pôr em causa a viabilidade de todo um projecto. Esta tese estuda o problema da modelação da web e a sua influência no desenho de Armazéns de Dados Web. Para este efeito, foi extraído um modelo de uma porção da web, e com base nele, desenhado um protótipo de um Armazém de Dados Web. Este protótipo foi validado através da sua utilização em vários contextos distintos. Os resultados obtidos mostram que a modelação da web deve ser considerada no processo de integração de dados da web.Fundação para Computação Científica Nacional (FCCN); LaSIGE-Laboratório de Sistemas Informáticos de Grande Escala; Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), (SFRH/BD/11062/2002

Improving usability outcomes in IS projects: the views of usability practitioners

What are the key aspects to achieving acceptable usability outcomes for information systems being developed? The changing technologies and increased usage across the general population, the impacts of this in our everyday lives, at work and at leisure are exponentially increasing. The interfaces and interaction styles presented as part of these technologies have been challenged to be more intuitive, contextually sensitive, location aware, human centred and aimed at a larger community of stakeholders. Performing usability activities is an increasingly important part of the development of new technologies, applications and websites. This study examined, for Information System projects, what were the key aspects that impacted on the usability outcome of developing Information Systems. This study presents a theory that describes how projects can improve their usability outcomes. This has emerged from interviews with experienced usability practitioners currently working in the usability industry. The transcripts from the qualitative interviews were analysed using a grounded theory methodology, which was an inductive and interpretive process in nature. The result of this analysis produced twenty-seven key concepts. These concepts were compared and contrasted against the literature. The theory that emerged consists of four major themes that included: usability mindset, collaborative approach, project constraints and usability practice. The key contribution to knowledge is the relationship concept between these themes. This is the nurturing of the usability mindset for the project stakeholders through involvement in usability activities throughout the project lifecycle. This engagement provides opportunities to elicit, understand and concord the usability goals, project constraints and the technological limitations with project stakeholders. The involvement of all project stakeholders promotes usability value and acceptance, which ideally progresses to a shared usability vision for the project and ultimately a usability mindset that can be utilised beyond a specific project and across an organisation