B2B (Business-to-Business) Sites


While financial sites and their requirements get plenty of publicity, other types of web sites exist, and they have different usage patterns. B2B sites, for example, exist to provide services from one company to other companies. The B2B site is not designed for retail but for wholesale operation. For example, purchasing agents for client companies might use a B2B site to obtain order quotes, check shipping status, and the like.

B2B web site users often log on and stay active throughout the day, much like the users of financial sites. However, the level of activity per user differs significantly from the brokerage scenario. A typical day for visitors on some B2B sites might include checking the inventory status of a purchase under consideration, placing an order, and checking the shipping status of an outstanding order. That's all the activity for the entire day. These low-utilization B2B sites do not experience huge swings in traffic and user volumes , as many financial or e-Commerce sites do. These sites generally have only hundreds or a few thousands of users known to the system. Depending on their markets, some B2B sites receive a worldwide set of users, which also flattens any daily traffic variation (and also implies round-the-clock web site availability).

B2B users generate fewer interactions with the web site, but each interaction usually requires "heavier" processing than a financial transaction. A B2B transaction might include processing a large order or receiving a large XML (extensible markup language) document for processing. Also, the web site interacts with a variety of back-end systems to handle each request. The B2B web application interacts with order processing, workflow management, inventory, and third-party systems (such as the shipping company's tracking database) to satisfy user requests .

Regardless of the weight of the transaction, the B2B user expects a responsive web site. While the user may be willing to wait longer than a day trader at a financial web site, the B2B user demands a site available when needed, and responsive to requests.

Caching Potential

Pages returned by B2B sites rarely contain heavy graphics content (unless, of course, the B2B site provides a "catalog feature"). The pages contain graphics merely as presentation aids rather than as content. Also, because the users interact with the web site infrequently throughout the day, maintaining large data caches for each user proves memory expensive. However, caching references to key data elements (such as the customer's account ID) speeds retrieval when the customer does make a request, and requires very little memory per user.

Special Considerations

B2B web sites focus on providing convenient access for their users. They also interact extensively with existing ordering systems. Let's discuss how these factors influence the performance tests.

User Pressure

B2B web sites support many concurrent users. Because their users want constant availability, many B2B web sites allow their users to log on to the web site just once in the morning and retain access to their accounts all day. Overall web site performance depends on the web application managing these users properly. If each user's HTTP session accumulates a large data cache over the course of a visit, the memory available to run applications quickly disappears.

Asynchronous Interactions

B2B systems often interact asynchronously with back-end resources such as the order processing system or the workflow system. Communication with these systems often involves a messaging service, such as IBM's WebSphere MQSeries product. These services support asynchronous communication to remote systems: The message gets delivered, but there's no guarantee of how long it takes to make the delivery. Web application developers frequently make the mistake of waiting indefinitely for asynchronous calls to return. This opens the door for "freezing" the web site (see Chapter 2) if the messaging service begins responding slowly.

Performance Testing a B2B Site

The performance tests for B2B sites differ from those for high-transaction web sites, as the number of logged-on users is much higher in proportion to the number of requests. The critical success factor becomes the number of logged-on users the site is able to support. Of course, the response time at this high-water mark of users must still fall into the acceptable range.

These tests typically involve lots of simulated users. Consider some of the suggestions in Chapter 6 for managing large user loads. Fully exercise each major user scenario during the test: ordering, checking order status, reviewing payment history, and the like. Also, provide sufficient capacity to simulate the logged-on user pressure, and use realistic think times during the scenario. Also, as with financial web sites, use test data during your performance tests. Coordinate your testing with any third-party resources (such as the shipping company), or simulate their resources in your environment.



Performance Analysis for Java Web Sites
Performance Analysis for Javaв„ў Websites
ISBN: 0201844540
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2001
Pages: 126

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