Planning for the flood: instrumentation and foresight

For most apps and websites, a sign of success is when people flood in to use the application. Ironically, however, most companies don’t plan for success. If the app is up and running with the initial users, it’s generally considered good enough.

Peering into the Future
What some people don’t recognize is that an app that runs for 1000 users isn’t the same as an app that runs for 100,000 or a million users. Whether you’re in retail or insurance, you know that the peak times are completely different than the day-to-day workload.

If your app developer is telling you that they’ll worry about scaling up later, that’s probably because they haven’t invested in the proper tooling to predict and prevent problems of scaling. At Clevertech, we aren’t prophets, but we have the instrumentation to reveal the chokepoints of an application - the performance of the critical resources that make up the application so that we can implement robust coding that future-proofs our clients’ applications.
Dynamic Apps and Preparing Your Codebase
Database calls can impact performance under stress. In dynamic applications, it’s important to take a look at how long it takes to query the database as well as the processing power needed to make those calls. Because dynamic applications are reliant on the database, this is where the right instrumentation can prevent the worst bottlenecks.

Proper planning of the application allows the programmers to conserve the amount of dependence on the database, knowing that each call to the database can cause a slowdown in performance. A variety of methodologies such as caching and pre-processing all reduce database calls that can contribute to the rapid performance of an application. When many people are using the application simultaneously, reduction in the database calls affects users across the board.
Sophisticated applications tend to use queues to manage the communications between distributed applications allowing them to stay decoupled and improve speed. Managing queues becomes important. The queue size indicates how many requests are waiting for handling. Clevertech uses tools that allow programmers to constantly monitor the queue size for handling of data, images, and other types of calls to maintain rapid communication.

When a large number of users simultaneously log into an application, the queue time can balloon, causing apps to experience slow response times. For example, in the retail application shown below, having fast response time on inventory means that the application will accurately display both the items in stock and the relevant price for that customer at that moment. During a sale or advertising campaign for a particular product, the app needs to know when an item is sold out or when a coupon is or isn’t valid for a specific item. Showing an item that is sold out causes disappointment for customers and damage to the retailer. Showing the wrong price causes losses or lost opportunities.
Success Planning through Proper Craftsmanship
The success of our customers is equivalent to our success. That’s why we build apps that have your success built-in from the beginning. Software development is a craft, and we take pride in creating software that serves our clients in the long run. With the right instrumentation, it’s easy to take a glance and know that we are delivering robust solutions that will serve your needs during the times when you need them the most.

Reach out to find out more about why the top global corporations prefer Clevertech as their outsourced development team.

If you’d like to find out more about our culture at Clevertech and current job openings, check out our YouTube channe l and visit clevertech.careers.

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