Cloud computing, NoSQL & websockets : cutting edge technologies for scalability on the web

Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to examine and analyse modern technologies and integrate them into a single architecture for the purpose of implementing scalable Internet solutions. The proposed technology stack should be capable of quickly scaling up or down to meet the varying needs of a web application. Three main required modules were identified: the hosting platform, the database and the client-server communication. Each was respectively addressed using Cloud Computing, NoSQL and WebSockets. Windows Azure was chosen to be the Cloud Platform, MongoDB was chosen as the NoSQL implementation and a variety of WebSocket server implementations were used. Using the ASP.NET MVC4 programming framework, I successfully managed to integrate these technologies into a single application which offered a basic Location Based Service. The application worked functionally, but also had to be tested for its scalability since this was the scope of the study. The system was load tested using both a third-party application as well as a testing application which I Implemented myself. The tests mainly consisted of increasing the load until the system consistently reported errors; at which point the system was scaled (by adjusting parameters in Windows Azure) and the tests repeated. This process was repeated until patterns could be identified. The test results showed that the system was successful in achieving the objectives of this study; the application managed to handle an ever increasing load by scaling in a linear fashion. Not only did scaling improve the maximum capacity of the system, it also improved the performance (in terms of response time and message throughput) when the load remained constant. Rather research is required to optimize the performance of the proposed stack; however, I believe that this study has successfully shown the potential of Cloud Computing, NoSQL and WebSockets to be used together as a scalable web architecture whilst also providing a guide fur developers who wish to use this stack to implement their own applications.