Reliability Measurement of Web 2.0 Applications

Abstract

Web 2.0, the interactive form of World Wide Web, is not just a combination of exciting technologies and services but complex pieces of software and their interconnection form Web 2.0. These applications are distinguished from traditional Web applications by their focus on user participation, user-generated content and collaborative features. Gmail, YouTube, Google Docs, and Facebook are just some examples of Web 2.0 applications. Like any engineered system, web applications can also behave in unpredictable ways under conditions of extreme stress from users, external applications and other software/hardware systems. All these factors play an important role in effecting the reliability of the application as “Software Reliability is the probability of failure-free software operation for a specified period of time in a specified environment.” Testing the behavior of software in the presence of such conditions and measuring its reliability is therefore very important. The proposed solution measures the reliability of Web 2.0 Application on the basis of maximum value of the users, and the events generated by those users. The failure probability of the events is then calculated at browser and servers. An object oriented model of our overall system provides the foundations for state chart diagrams for the browser and servers separately. The state chart diagrams are then converted to markov models which are used to make a probabilistic model of the system. The final value of the execution rate and the event generation rate are compared to confirm that the events generated by the users have been successfully executed and the system is reliable for that particular value of users and events. An extensive verification of the overall proposed methodology has been carried out by using MATLAB.