Analyzing Performance Issues of Industrial User Interfaces: Experiences and Results

Abstract

User interfaces of modern industrial automation systems are required to provide similar user experience as known from mass market consumer devices like smartphones. They need to support an increasing amount of dynamic visualizations as well as multi-touch interactions and screen gestures. However, the rich visualization frameworks that are applied and the elaborated user interfaces built on top have demanding hardware requirements, which can result in critical performance issues when run on resource-limited target platforms. In this paper we share our experiences and findings from analyzing the performance issues of a state-of-the-art user interface based on JavaFX. We describe the performance analysis approach, the tools we used for measurement and analysis, as well as insights gained into the JavaFX platform. We started with measuring and optimizing the performance of a concrete implementation of a user interface. Our results triggered immediate improvement actions, but they also led to the plan to develop of a performance model and corresponding tool support for predicting potential performance issues at design time, before the user interface is completed and deployed to the target hardware.