Towards Automatic Performance and Scalability Testing of Rich Internet Applications in the Cloud

Abstract

The emergence of asynchronous techniques for building interactive web applications has led to the development of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). RIAs offer greatly enhanced usability and the ability to deliver rich dynamic content. However, due to the widespread use of RIAs, there is a need to develop and test highly scalable RIAs. Furthermore, cloud computing introduces new opportunities for ensuring and extending performance and scalability of RIAs. This has necessitated the need to devise effective ways for doing automatic performance and scalability testing of RIAs. In this paper, we describe different problems and challenges in automatic performance and scalability testing of RIAs. We then propose the ASTORIA framework as a novel solution to the identified problems and challenges. The effectiveness of our proposed approach is demonstrated by building a working prototype for ASTORIA and by using it for conducting experiments.