white paper imaginea Performance Testing Social Networking (Facebook ) Apps

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1 white paper Performance Testing Social Networking (Facebook ) Apps The success of social networking sites like Facebook or Myspace, hinges on attracting and retaining more users. Their main focus is to build on-line communities that share common activities or interests. Some social networking sites sell on-line advertising. Generally these ads are hosted on a user's profile page, the community s home page, and so on. These ads are in the form of boxes that are developed in the respective site's API. This white paper focuses on Performance Testing of Widgets, APIs, and Apps, dropped onto web pages of a third party web site. This paper is based on the experience of teams from Imaginea in developing and testing large Facebook applications or PoCs Copyright 2010, Imaginea Inc. Imaginea is a Pramati business. All Trade Names and Marks belong to their respective owners.

2 2 Intended Audience The target audience of this white paper is anyone who has products to be deployed on Social Networking Platforms like Facebook, MySpace and others, apart from developing such applications. This white paper focuses on Performance Testing of Widgets, APIs, and Apps, dropped onto web pages of a third party web site. The paper on testing typical social networking applications is based on the experience of teams from Imaginea in developing and testing large Facebook applications or PoCs. Overview of Social Networking Applications What is a Social Networking Site? A social network service focuses on building on-line communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as and instant messaging services. Examples of Social Networking Sites Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Ning, Hi5 What is a Social Networking Application? A small application deployed publicly as a widget or mashup that others can drop onto a web page (such as a blog or Face-book profile page). These applications are published at social networking websites as boxes. Say in Facebook, FBML for a profile box is set by calling profile.setfbml through the API. The FBML is cached on Facebook's server until profile.setfbml is called again through a canvas page. What is FBML? Facebook Markup Language ("FBML") is a variant-evolved subset of HTML. It allows Facebook Application developers to customize the "look and feel" of their applications. It is the specification to encode content so that Facebook's servers can read and publish it. This is required in the Facebook specific feed so that Facebook's system can properly parse content and publish it as specified. Standards of Social Networking (Facebook) Sites Standards play the important role in functional testing of Social Network applications. Most global clients seek universally accepted certifications or standards developed by reputed institutes or organizations. Our testing teams perform functional testing adhering to the standards defined by Facebook. These standards are treated as basic guidelines for a Social Networking Application. Some of these standards are listed below: Does the application generate any notification, request, invitation, news feed story, mini-feed story, profile box content, or message on behalf of a user that misrepresents that user's activity in any way? Do all representations of action taken by a user correspond to actions initiated by the user within

3 3 Extranet Internet Web Server Appl. Server DB Firewall, Proxy, Reverse Proxy Internet Service Provider Browser Web the application? Does the application promote other applications in notifications in order to pool notifications together and work around either application's allocation limit? Does the application put links into feed stories and notifications that trick users into installing another application? Does the application tag images, nor encourage users to tag images, when the tag does not accurately label what is depicted in the image? Does the application use another user's session key when making a call to the Facebook Platform API? [Must use the session key of a user who is actively using the application.] A complete list of standards for Facebook applications can be found at: atform_policy Overview of Performance and Load Testing Social Networking Applications Web based application Architecture A generic architecture for a web-based application is shown above: For a web-based application like Facebook, the following Testing Techniques are applicable: Unit Tests Smoke/Sanity Tests Functional Tests Load/Performance/Stress Test Accessibility/Security Tests

4 4 Here, we shall focus more on Performance Testing of browser-based, social networking applications. A separate Case Study, on mypicks Beijing 2008, provides more information on the challenges encountered, and the attention to be paid to design implementations, when building social networking applications. Summary of Architecture The success of social networking sites like Facebook or Myspace, hinges on attracting and retaining more users. Their main focus is to build on-line communities that share activities or interests. Some social networking sites sell on-line advertising. Generally these advertisements are hosted on a user's profile page, the community s home page, and so on. These ads are in the form of boxes that are developed in the respective site's API. For example, Facebook has developed such APIs on its platform. Using FBML, developers can create and host ads on Facebook's site. These APIs, in turn, route to a third party application, widget or service, which are hosted on different servers. All these actions are performed over regular web browsers like Firefox, IE and others. Developing Performance, Load Test Framework for Social Networking Applications Generally, testing frameworks directed towards performance and load-testing focus on the following components of the application and its system: Application/Web Server Architecture of Social Networking Applications Database Server Application Pages through UI Application API/Code/Component Web Services Protocols specific to the application Third party devices like mobile phones, pocket PCs, iphones, Black-Berry, etc. Single, or Multi-Session tests Single, or Multi-Browser tests Expertise Required Developing and Testing Social Network Application requires strong PHP, JavaScript, AJAX, SQL and many other miscellaneous skills. Having built our own Facebook applications (mypicks Beijing and mypicks US Elections 2008), we have deep

5 5 understanding of Functional and Performance/Load Testing of these applications. Evaluate System Engineers from Imaginea have expertise in testing best-in-class Facebook applications built by Pramati SocialTwist teams. This experience has helped them understand and apply the required knowledge, competency and delivery excellence in the shortest possible time frame. These engineers have the Rebenchmark after tuning Tune System Criteria not met Develop Test Assets Execute Baseline Benchmark Tests Analyze Results Inconclusive results Identify Exploratory Tests expertise required to check what a potential Face- Execute Scheduled Tasks book application can do, and what developers are All criteria met not allowed to do, or allowed to do, in accordance with Facebook policies. Complete Engagement Approach of Performance, Load Test Social Networking Applications Performance Testing Process at Imaginea In the above process, Test Assets are Imaginea Performance Testing Strategy document Imaginea Performance Risk Mitigation Plan Automated Test Scripts Test Scenarios (Happy Paths) These Test Assets are executed with an initial set of virtual users. Once the Baseline or Benchmark is defined, the results are analyzed. Based on the results, bottlenecks are identified and the necessary Performance Tuning steps are developed. The above Performance Tuning Cycle is executed till the SLA (Performance Acceptance Criteria) defined in the Performance, or Load Test Strategy is achieved. Performance Testing Process at Imaginea The following points highlight various aspects of the Performance Testing Process: 1. Selecting the right automation test tool for perfect testing. The tool should: - Support all possible platforms and browsers - Support testing for various screen types, resolutions, and input mechanisms such as mobiles, pocket PCs, etc - Support different performance monitors 2. Performance, Load Testing driven by what is to be measured - Response time testing - Throughput testing - Availability testing - Measurement of resource utilization

6 6 - Capacity testing - Error rate measurement 3. Performance, or Load Testing based on the source, or type of load - Usage-based testing - Load variation or bounce testing - Ramp-up testing - Component-specific testing 4. Performance, or Load Testing to stress the system, or find its limits - Scalability testing - Duration or endurance testing - Breakpoint testing - Deadlock testing Conclusion Imaginea has demonstrated competency in developing, testing, and successfully deploying best in class, load-intensive, high-performing, and scalable Facebook applications. Its automated load testing capabilities help test potential Facebook applications against varying loads of requirements. The engineers from Imaginea have the capability to run load, performance, reliability and scalability tests against Face book applications, helping you focus on application development. Our experience with developing and testing mypicks Beijing 2008 and mypicks US Election 2008 has added to our expertise and brought in new capabilities in providing testing services distinctly developed for social networking applications. 5. Performance Tuning Components - Web Server Configuration - Database Design and configuration - Application or file server configuration - Cluster Management - Network Components - Server Hardware adequacy - Batch Process Scheduling/concurrency - Network Load Balancer configuration - Firewall or Proxy Server efficiency Imaginea provides product engineering services to independent software vendors, enterprises and online SaaS businesses looking for reliable technology partner. Services stretch end to end, from interaction design to development to testing to managing clouds. For more information on Imaginea, visit Imaginea is a business unit of Pramati Technologies ( Contact: 1975, W. El Camino Real, Suite 301, Mountain View, CA (866) sales@.com Copyright 2010, Imaginea Inc. Private Limited. All trademarks and names belong to their respective owners.