Performance Metrics

11 November 2001

Performancemetrics project for Commercialware


|Metric: measurement ofa particular characteristic of a program's performance or efficiency.

Tim has since taken over this projecthttp://marge.mediasset.com/investigators/tweaver/

Update 3.8.2001 - I've been through the cdc demo, now I must talk toTrish about the desired metrics.

I believe that the goal is to review the performance of the client sideof the CDC app. Obviously, it being a web UI makes things particularlyentertaining, given the plethora of browser versions out there.Assuming that minimal processing takes place on the client (given thatthe web component was added in version this is a safe assumption, Ihope) then the primary fields of concern would be (in no particularorder):

  • speed of network connection. Obviouslya slow connection will have a negative impact on performance. The moreback-and-forth between client and server, the uglier it gets.
  • server load. A server doing multipleduties (e.g. mail and web, web and database, etc etc) will rapidly slowto a crawl under significant volumes of client requests (NT platform,so server being used for more than one purpose is a bad idea anyway).
  • profile of client machine. What clientside code there is will only perform as well as it is able to on theclient machine. The client profile includes things like browser version.
  • code cleanliness of web interface.Clean code works better.
  • useability of web interface. If theuser has trouble using the site from a comprehension standpoint, itdoesn't matter how fast the server or net connection are.
  • other variables to be named later


Resources

  •    useit has some nice commentsonmetrics, though the focus is on useability rather than basic UIperformance.
  •    QUIP A project out ofBezerkeley on UIProfiling.
  •    linux.com has an interestingdiscussion on the eazel project (interesting how the assumptions madeabout the users were wrong).


Side note: Why would you trust a uidesign site that used green andpurple as their colors, had confusing navigation, and a broken searchfunction?