Evaluating the impact of caching on the energy consumption and performance of progressive web apps

Abstract

Context. Since today mobile devices have limited battery life, the energy consumption of the software running on them can play a strong role with respect to the success of mobile-based businesses. Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) are built using common web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and are commonly used for providing a better user experience to mobile users. Caching is the main technique used by PWA developers for optimizing network usage and for providing a meaningful experience even when the user's device is offline. Goal. This paper aims at assessing the impact of caching on both the energy consumption and performance of PWAs. Method. We conducted an empirical experiment targeting 9 real PWAs developed by third-party developers. The experiment is designed as a 1 factor-2 treatments study, with the usage of caching as the single factor and the status of the cache as treatments (empty vs populated cache). The response variables of the experiment are (i) the energy consumption of the mobile device and (ii) the page load time of the PWAs. The experiment is executed on a real Android device running the Mozilla Firefox browser. Results. Our results show that PWAs do not consume significantly different amounts of energy when loaded either with an empty or populated cache. However, the page load time of PWAs is significantly lower when the cache is already populated, with a medium effect size. Conclusions. This study confirms that PWAs are promising in terms of energy consumption and provides evidence that caching can be safely exploited by PWA developers concerned with energy consumption. The study provides also empirical evidence that caching is an effective technique for improving the user experience in terms of page loading time of PWAs. CCS CONCEPTS • Software and its engineering → Software performance; • Information systems → Web applications.

Energy Efficiency Analysis of Code Refactoring Techniques for Green and Sustainable Software in Portable Devices

“…The Wilcoxon signed-rank statistical test [51], which is a type of non-parametric test, was used to determine whether the difference between the amount of energy consumed by the original code and refactored code of each applications was statistically significant. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was run at a significance level of 0.05 to judge energy consumption before refactoring and after refactoring.…”

A Systematic Literature Review on Progressive Web Application Practice and Challenges

“…Framework requirement -It were declared that service workers do not significantly affect the energy efficiency of PWA on low-mid and high-end mobile devices also on empty or populated caches. Malavolta et al [1,28] performed an application from a proxy that controls the service worker is on/off state. In other studies, service workers make applications run faster.…”

“…According to Malavolta et al [1] , Progressive Web App (PWA) is a new mobile application development architecture with advantages over its predecessors. It can work with low or no internet connection, run in the background, and assist the push notification.…”

“…It can work with low or no internet connection, run in the background, and assist the push notification. It is unique due to its progressive steps [1] . Not all progressive web apps can be called progressive web apps, but PWA is always a progressive web app [2] .…”

Tren dan Peluang Cross-Platform Mobile App untuk Developer Pemula

“…Sedangkan untuk programmer baru yang ingin berkarir di industri ini, cross-platform framework dan teknologi web berbasis JavaScript dapat menjadi salah satu alternatif untuk dikuasai dan menjadi ahli dibidang tersebut. Selain itu, perkembangan teknologi cross-platform mobile app ini diharapkan juga melahirkan lebih banyak lagi peneliti yang menulis paper tentang teknologi tersebut terutama terkait dengan performansi [11], [12] dan sekuriti.…”