Downloads:
WeBWorK
SimpleSpreadsheet
Photosharing
Application
Publications
Support
Near the turn of the century, Internet
services shifted from delivering only static content to interactive
dynamic content. Nowadays, another shift is underway.
An
increasingly popular class of web applications, called collaborative web applications,
primarily rely on end users to create content. Such
user-supplied
content can be static (e.g., Youtube videos) or dynamic (e.g., Facebook
applications). The goal of this work is to characterize
server
side demands of these new Web 2.0 workloads.
Project members: Christopher Stewart, Matthew Leventi, and Kai Shen.
"For better or
worse, benchmarks shape a field." --- David Patterson
To
validate our research, we experiment with several collaborative web
applications deployed on our local cluster. The applications
are
available for download below. Feel free to use them to
further
your own research agenda.
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WeBWorK
WeBWorK
delivers individualized
homework problems over the web. Specifically, teachers supply
server-side scripts that create dynamic homework problems for their
students to solve. WeBWorK is deployed at over more than 70
institutions worldwide and serves more than 50,000 students. To
use
WeBWorK as a homework checker in the classroom, visit the new wiki.
On this site, we distribute the moodle-integrated version of
WeBWorK currently deployed at the University of Rochester, complete
with the real working dataset (i.e., the real questions supplied by
teachers). We also supply a trace of student access patterns
to
WeBWorK questions. Combined these components allow us to
replay
WeBWorK requests on our local cluster in a very realistic fashion.
Warning: WeBWorK is a real application that
requires many interacting components (all of which fortunately are
free). Successful deployment can take a lot of trial and
error.
Additional help for installation can be found at the wiki
above
and at the moodle-integration homepage.
WeBWorK Quick Install
for 32-bit Linux-based systems:
All packages installed in a portable directory:
WeBWorK-quickinstall.tar.gz
Full installation
procedure:
1. Instructions to install the pre-requisite applications and
libraries:

2. WeBWork components: WeBWorK-application.tar.gz
WeBWorK itself consists of two components. The
WeBWorK
question server executes teacher supplied questions and formats them
for presentation using latex and dvipng.
WeBWorK question type
for moodle provides an interface between the question server and the
popular Moodle course management system. We also distribute a
real world WeBWorK dataset for realistic evaluation.
3. WeBWorK workload generator: WeBWorK-trace.tar.gz
The workload generator reissues a real trace of WeBWorK
requests observed at the University of Rochester deployment.
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SimpleSpreadsheet
Coming soon.
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Photosharing
Coming soon.
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Empirical
Examination of A Collaborative Web Application, Christopher
Stewart, Matthew Leventi, and Kai Shen, To appear IEEE International
Symposium on Workload Characterization
(Special Session on Benchmark Innovation), Seattle, WA, September 2008.
Support: A portion of this project is
supported by the
National Science Foundation.
Note: Any opinions, findings, and
conclusions or
recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not
necessarily
reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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