Content area

Abstract

Performance and security are among the most desirable properties of Web Applications. The success of a Web Application depends on user satisfaction and is strongly correlated with the perceived responsiveness of the application and performance. Additionally, security is of utmost importance to retain user trust in a world ridden with malicious actors. However, drawing upon the full potential of a web application can involve the introduction of non-linear control flow, framework-specific changes and optimizations, or extensive refactoring for adoption of newer constructs in an ever-evolving ecosystem. Similarly, mitigating security vulnerabilities is also not trivial. These changes are often intrusive and can span multiple files. In this thesis, we explore how a declarative approach to specifying project-spanning program transformations can address these challenges. We present three major themes to improve the responsiveness and performance of web applications, and one theme to improve security: introducing asynchrony, introducing laziness, reducing superfluous computation, and introducing memory segmentation. We demonstrate the application of a declarative re-writing approach to these themes in the following contributions: (i) automatic migration from synchronous to asynchronous JavaScript APIs, (ii) increasing the responsiveness of web applications by introducing lazy loading, (iii) remediating superfluous re-rendering in React applications, and (iv) rewriting WebAssembly binaries to mitigate security vulnerabilities.

Details

1010268
Title
Optimizing Web Applications Using Declarative Software Rewriting
Number of pages
161
Publication year
2025
Degree date
2025
School code
0160
Source
DAI-B 87/2(E), Dissertation Abstracts International
ISBN
9798290941578
Advisor
Committee member
Kirda, Engin; Guha, Arjun; Liblit, Ben
University/institution
Northeastern University
Department
Computer Science
University location
United States -- Massachusetts
Degree
Ph.D.
Source type
Dissertation or Thesis
Language
English
Document type
Dissertation/Thesis
Dissertation/thesis number
32173759
ProQuest document ID
3238561787
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/optimizing-web-applications-using-declarative/docview/3238561787/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
Database copyright ProQuest LLC; ProQuest does not claim copyright in the individual underlying works.
Database
ProQuest One Academic