Publications

Stats

View publication

Title Modular and Flexible Causality Control on the Web
Authors Paul Leger, Éric Tanter, Rémi Douence
Publication date September 2013
Abstract Ajax allows JavaScript programmers to create interactive,
collaborative, and user-centered Web applications, known as Web 2.0
Applications. These Web applications behave as distributed systems because
processors are user machines that are used to send and receive messages
between one another. Unsurprisingly, these applications have to address the
same causality issues present in distributed systems like the need (a) to
control the causality between messages sent and responses received and (b)
to react to distributed causal relations. JavaScript programmers overcome
these issues using rudimentary and alternative techniques that largely
ignore the distributed computing theory. In addition, these techniques are
not very flexible and need to intrusively modify these Web applications. In
this paper, we study how causality issues affect these applications and
present WeCa, a practical library that allows for modular and flexible
control over these causality issues in Web applications. In contrast to
current proposals, WeCa is based on (stateful) aspects, message ordering
strategies, and vector clocks. We illustrate WeCa in action with several
practical examples from the realm of Web applications. In addition, we
evaluate our proposal with a third-party application and its
performance.
Pages 1538-1558
Volume 78
Journal name Science of Computer Programming
Publisher Elsevier Science (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Reference URL View reference page