Performance testing of web-based geographical information system (GIS) application: A case study on autodesk mapguide map server

Abstract

The Internet has revolutionized the means of accessing and disseminating data and information in typical Geographic Information System (GIS) applications. Nowadays GIS applications can be distributed through wired and wireless Internet network. However, the primary design of Internet since 30 years ago is for disseminating text-based information. This architecture has caused several performance issues in distributing geospatial data on the Web. Furthermore, the fact that a lot of aspects might affect and be the bottlenecks of typical web application performance present new challenges for GIS developers to ensure high quality of their web GIS. Hence, this research is carried out to study this issue (i.e. the performance of Web GIS application) with a particular focus on application developed using Autodesk MapGuide as a map server. Several aspects are taken into consideration which consist of client bandwidth, number of client access, client platforms, types of MapGuide Viewer and format of spatial data sources. The findings are on the response time in terms of accessing and displaying geospatial data based on these five aspects. The results can be used as guide in evaluating and tuning the performance of a particular Web-based GIS application.