Model-Driven Performance Evaluation of Web Application Portals

Emerging trends and challenges. The advent of web-based applications, such as shopping, social networking, photos, videos, music, gaming, and chat, are increasing the popularity and accessibility of the Internet. There is also growing focus on application integration platforms, such as Sun’s Java Composite Application Platform Suite, Facebook’s Application Platform, and Oracle’s Application Development Framework, where a single portal can provide many services. These integrated web sites are referred in this paper as web application portals, which are Internet sites that provide multiple services to users. For example, users of social networking sites, such as Facebook (www.facebook.com) and MySpace (www.myspace.com), upload recent photos and videos, exchange messages and chat with each other, and play online games with friends.