Aug 2022 → Dec 2022

Full-Stack Developer

An Express and Node application where the performance work happened in the database, not the code.

The desk on day one, before anything was on it.

Type: Engineering
Where: Texas A&M University
When: Aug 2022 → Dec 2022
Duration: 4 mo
Location: College Station, TX

The brief

A university web application with a React client and an Express/Node server, hosted on AWS.

Most of the 20% backend improvement came from three things that had nothing to do with application code: restructuring the slowest queries, adding the indexes they actually needed, and putting Redis in front of the reads that never changed.

What I did

Modeled a full-stack web application using Express.js and Node for server-side processing, integrating React and Xamarin for client-side rendering.
Advanced SQL database management through query structuring, indexing and Redis caching to reduce API latency.
Hosted the application securely on AWS and lifted backend performance by 20%, integrating client requirements through Jira and Git.

Screens

Measured

20%backend performance

Redisread cache

AWShosting

Architecture

Redis sits between the API and the database — the reads that never changed stopped reaching SQL.

In hindsight

I cached before I measured, and the first cache I added was in front of a query that was already fast. Profiling first would have got me to the same 20% in a third of the time.

Stack

Node.jsExpressReactXamarinRedisAWSSQL