The document outlines a presentation on building a high-performance search feature for mobile applications, discussing the importance of search quality and application performance. Key topics include performance testing, optimization strategies such as caching and concurrency, and search result relevance. It emphasizes the need for careful metrics definition and the management of data and resources to ensure effective app performance.

1. Building High Performance
Search Feature
Mobile Development Stage
Tech in Asia Product Development Conference 2017
August 10th, 2017

2. Who am I?
• Setyo Legowo (@setyolegowo)
• Currently work as Software Engineer in Urbanindo
• Informatics graduate from Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB)
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

3. Outline
• Why search feature matter
• All about application performance
• Performance testing
• Tips for optimizations
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

4. Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage
Product Name
Key / Terms Driver
List of ProductRelevance sites Closest driver

5. Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage
Input
Search result

6. Challenges
• Use-cases variation
• Bugs
• Mission critical feature
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

7. “3” Performance Indicators
Memory
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage
Processor
I/O
o Load search result and
assets to memory
o Caching
o Compression
o Query
o Context
o Render assets
o CPU utilization
o Concurrency
Relevance
o Server response time
o Data usage
o Offline

8. Lazy Load
• Load or render what needed to be appeared on the screen
• Mostly delay loading on assets
image; paging search result (occasionally)
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

9. Cache (Client)
• Save assets into app local storage,
but do not save all of it
• Very useful when offline
• “Garbage collection” strategy
• Reuse high frequency loaded assets
• Specific cache strategy which parallel with business
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

10. Cache (Server)
• Use Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Low bandwidth and/or CPU usage to server
• Cache high frequency query and its result set
• Cache must be faster than database
• Easy to maintain if the cache database complement with use case
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

11. Concurrency
• Process/render in “parallel”
• Pool the process or the threads
• Better if use throttling or queue mechanism
• Think the process in Directed Acyclic Graph
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

12. Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Directed_acyclic_graph.svg/800px-Directed_acyclic_graph.svg.png

13. Compression
• Compress assets as much as you can
• Minimize storage space usage
• Reduce data transfer cost
• Use binary data transfer instead of alphabet base
• Disadvantages: use more CPU
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

14. Search Result Relevance
• Use query language
• Prone to ambiguous
• Advance: Use text similarity algorithm
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

15. There are any drawbacks?
• Architecture tend to be more complex
• Optimization tends to make code harder to understand and
maintain
• Over focus on insignificant performance improvement
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

16. Performance Testing
• Define the metrics (e.g. SLA) and obey to it
• Application profiling
• Find bottleneck or hotspot
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

17. Tips for Optimization (in general)
• Find the bottleneck/hotspot as early as possible
• Follow 80/20 rules
• Define metrics
• Number of search, unique search, result, …
• Measure the right load between memory, CPU, and I/O
• Clean code
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

18. Tips for Optimization (search feature)
• Progressive update
• Render search result eagerly “only” the appeared content or panel
• Cache as much as possible
• Able to run in offline mode
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

19. Any question?
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage

20. Thank You
Tech in Asia - PDC17, Mobile Dev Stage