Operating system impact on CPU and RAM utilisation when introducing XML security

Introducing XML security to a web service increases the message size, which impacts the XML parsing of the greater message and complicates its processing due to complex cryptographic operations. Both tasks impact the web server´s CPU and RAM utilisation.The performance impact is even more expressed when the number of concurrent messages is rapidly increased. In this paper we analyze the impact of securing a web service message with XML Signature and XML Encryption over the hardware performance, varying the message size and the number of concurrent messages. The results show that web server that is installed on Linux utilizes the CPU less than the same web server that is installed on Windows. The situation for RAM memory is opposite, that is, the web server installed on Windows operating system occupies less RAM memory.