Best Dissertation Symposium: Reducing user-perceived latency in mobile applications via prefetching and caching

Slides for my PhD dissertation "Reducing user-perceived latency in mobile applications via prefetching and caching", presented at the Best Dissertation Symposium 2021 at the University of Southern California.
Presentation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/a5oTwih9rkE

Transcript

1. Reducing User-Perceived Latency in Mobile Applications via Prefetching and Caching Yixue Zhao Advisor: Nenad Medvidović Computing Innovation Fellow (CIFellow) University of Massachusetts Amherst
4. Latency!
5. Latency Problem Angry Users Sales Loss 5
6. Main Cause: Network Transfer Network round trip Mobile App Remote Server Main cause of user-perceived latency is network transfer since mobile apps spend most time fetching data from remote servers. [Ravindranath et al. OSDI’12] 6
7. Effective Solution! Problem: Annoying loading wheel L Solution: Prefetching and Caching 7
8. Prefetching and Caching local cache on the phone immediate response! 8
9. Prefetching and Caching 9 ? But how?
10. 10 Literature Study Techniques Testing
11. 1. Two categories Literature Study Techniques Testing 11
12. Two Categories q Content-based q No existing solution q Call for novel idea q History-based q Applicable existing solution q Adapt to mobile domain 12
13. q Content-based q No existing solution q Call for novel idea q History-based q Applicable existing solution q Adapt to mobile domain 13 Techniques Two Categories
14. 14 2. Is it a good idea? Literature Study Techniques Testing
15. 15 Literature Study Techniques Testing 2. Is it a good idea?
16. 16 3a. Content-based (first work) Literature Study Techniques Testing
17. Content-based: PALOMA Key Insights q App’s code has all we need q “User think time” provides opportunities 17
18. PALOMA at a High Level Code Analysis App Rewriting Optimized App 18
19. PALOMA at a High Level 19 Automatic No other information required 99% latency reduction! Code Analysis App Rewriting Optimized App
20. 20 Literature Study Techniques Testing 3b. History-based (practical solution)
21. History-based: HiPHarness 21 Existing Solutions HiPHarness q Large prediction models q Big cost q Privacy issues
22. History-based: HiPHarness 22 Existing Solutions HiPHarness q Large prediction models q Big cost q Privacy issues q Small prediction models! q Good training data q Enough training data
23. History-based: HiPHarness 23 Existing Solutions HiPHarness q Large prediction models q Big cost q Privacy issues q Small prediction models! q Good training data q Enough training data 94% smaller!
24. HiPHarness Dataset q 10,000+ mobile users q 15+ million network requests q 7+ million prediction models 24
25. q Small prediction models work great! q Win-win (reduce size AND improve accuracy) q Challenged prior conclusion q Re-opened this area HiPHarness Takeaways 25 Less is More!
26. 26 Literature Study Techniques Testing 4. Which is better?
27. Challenges in Testing q Testing prefetching and caching techniques is very expensive q Require real-user traces (i.e., “usage-based test”) q hire participants q obtain permission q provide guidelines q provide compensation q … 27
28. Challenges in Testing q Testing prefetching and caching techniques is very expensive q Require real-user traces (i.e., “usage-based test”) q hire participants q obtain permission q provide guidelines q provide compensation q … 28 I need this!
29. Usage-based Test Background q Emerging research area in Software Testing (since 2018) q State-of-the-art research: test-reuse techniques 29
30. FrUITeR at a High Level q Goal: find out who’s better q Reproduce existing techniques q Establish standard pipeline q Fair comparison in the same way A Framework for Evaluating UI Test Reuse 30
31. Challenges in Practice Discuss with authors 31 Study implementation Modify implementation Establish benchmark Construct ground truths
32. Reproducibility Crisis 32 Common Theme q “It’s hard to (re)use other research tools” q “They don’t have documentation” q “It’s hard to run a research tool on my own apps” q …
33. 33 FrUITeR’s Open Science Contribution FrUITeR’s Website: https://felicitia.github.io/FrUITeR/
34. v Prefetching & caching is good idea J encouraged more techniques Recap Dissertation Contributions 34
35. v Prefetching & caching is good idea J encouraged more techniques v First content-based (PALOMA) inspired follow-up work Recap Dissertation Contributions 35
36. v Prefetching & caching is good idea J encouraged more techniques v First content-based (PALOMA) inspired follow-up work v Make history-based practical (HiPHarness) challenged prior conclusion & re-opened this area Recap Dissertation Contributions 36
37. v Prefetching & caching is good idea J encouraged more techniques v First content-based (PALOMA) inspired follow-up work v Make history-based practical (HiPHarness) challenged prior conclusion & re-opened this area v Test which is better (FrUITeR) set standards for a fair playground Recap Dissertation Contributions 37
38. 4. Which is better? (FrUITeR) Dissertation & Beyond Mobile-App Performance 38 Software Testing Open Science
39. Dissertation Publications v Literature Review & Empirical Study [ASE 2018] v Prefetching & Caching Techniques [MOBILESoft 2017 SRC ICSE 2018, MOBILESoft 2021] v Software Testing [ESEC/FSE 2020] v Open Science [MOBILESoft 2019 Visions, ICSE 2019 Doctoral Symposium] 39
40. Dissertation Publications v Literature Review & Empirical Study [ASE 2018] v Prefetching & Caching Techniques [MOBILESoft 2017 SRC ICSE 2018, MOBILESoft 2021] v Software Testing [ESEC/FSE 2020] v Open Science [MOBILESoft 2019 Visions, ICSE 2019 Doctoral Symposium] 40 https://tinyurl.com/yixuedissertation https://tinyurl.com/yixuetalks
41. Thank you! 41