Database-Backed Web Applications in the Wild: How Well Do They Work?

TL;DR

This paper introduces CADO, a tool for analyzing the performance of ORM-based web applications, revealing common issues and potential improvements through analysis of 27 real-world Ruby on Rails apps.

Contribution

The paper presents CADO, a novel static and dynamic analysis tool for ORM-based web apps, and provides insights into performance bottlenecks in real-world applications.

Findings

Identified common query and design issues affecting performance

Analyzed 27 open-source Rails applications across various domains

Suggested remedies and research directions for ORM performance problems

Abstract

Most modern database-backed web applications are built upon Object Relational Mapping (ORM) frameworks. While ORM frameworks ease application development by abstracting persistent data as objects, such convenience often comes with a performance cost. In this paper, we present CADO, a tool that analyzes the application logic and its interaction with databases using the Ruby on Rails ORM framework. CADO includes a static program analyzer, a profiler and a synthetic data generator to extract and understand application's performance characteristics. We used CADO to analyze the performance problems of 27 real-world open-source Rails applications, covering domains such as online forums, e-commerce, project management, blogs, etc. Based on the results, we uncovered a number of issues that lead to sub-optimal application performance, ranging from issuing queries, how result sets are used, and physical design. We suggest possible remedies for each issue, and highlight new research opportunities that arise from them.