Considering Context Events in Event-Based Testing of Mobile Applications

A relevant complexity factor in developing and testing mobile apps is given by their sensibility to changes in the context in which they run. As an example, apps running on a smartphone can be influenced by location changes, phone calls, device movements and many other typologies of context events. In this paper, we address the problem of testing a mobile app as an event-driven system by taking into account both context events and GUI events. We present approaches based on the definition of reusable event patterns for the manual and automatic generation of test cases for mobile app testing. One of the proposed testing techniques, based on a systematic and automatic exploration of the behaviour of an Android app, has been implemented and some preliminary case studies on real apps have been carried out in order to explore their effectiveness.

[1]  Myra B. Cohen,et al.  GUI Interaction Testing: Incorporating Event Context , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

[2]  Matthias Baldauf,et al.  A survey on context-aware systems , 2007, Int. J. Ad Hoc Ubiquitous Comput..

[3]  Johan Lilius,et al.  Scenario-Based Test Case Generation Using Event-B Models , 2009, 2009 First International Conference on Advances in System Testing and Validation Lifecycle.

[4]  Gregory D. Abowd,et al.  Towards a Better Understanding of Context and Context-Awareness , 1999, HUC.

[5]  Xiang Long,et al.  Adaptive random testing of mobile application , 2010, 2010 2nd International Conference on Computer Engineering and Technology.

[6]  Stephen S. Yau,et al.  Testing context-sensitive middleware-based software applications , 2004, Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference, 2004. COMPSAC 2004..

[7]  Anthony I. Wasserman,et al.  Software engineering issues for mobile application development , 2010, FoSER '10.

[8]  Porfirio Tramontana,et al.  Using GUI ripping for automated testing of Android applications , 2012, 2012 Proceedings of the 27th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering.

[9]  David S. Rosenblum,et al.  Model-based fault detection in context-aware adaptive applications , 2008, SIGSOFT '08/FSE-16.

[10]  José Creissac Campos,et al.  Test case generation from mutated task models , 2011, EICS '11.

[11]  Raymond A. Paul,et al.  Rapid embedded system testing using verification patterns , 2005, IEEE Software.

[12]  Henry Muccini,et al.  Software testing of mobile applications: Challenges and future research directions , 2012, 2012 7th International Workshop on Automation of Software Test (AST).

[13]  Porfirio Tramontana,et al.  A toolset for GUI testing of Android applications , 2012, 2012 28th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM).

[14]  Sandro Rodriguez Garzon,et al.  Model-based generation of scenario-specific event sequences for the simulation of recurrent user behavior within context-aware applications (WIP) , 2012, SpringSim.

[15]  Porfirio Tramontana,et al.  Testing Android Mobile Applications: Challenges, Strategies, and Approaches , 2013, Adv. Comput..

[16]  Iulian Neamtiu,et al.  Automating GUI testing for Android applications , 2011, AST '11.

[17]  Byoungju Choi,et al.  Performance Testing of Mobile Applications at the Unit Test Level , 2009, 2009 Third IEEE International Conference on Secure Software Integration and Reliability Improvement.

[18]  Fevzi Belli,et al.  Testing is an Event-Centric Activity , 2012, 2012 IEEE Sixth International Conference on Software Security and Reliability Companion.

[19]  Porfirio Tramontana,et al.  A GUI Crawling-Based Technique for Android Mobile Application Testing , 2011, 2011 IEEE Fourth International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops.

[20]  Saurabh Bagchi,et al.  Characterizing Failures in Mobile OSes: A Case Study with Android and Symbian , 2010, 2010 IEEE 21st International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering.

[21]  David S. Rosenblum,et al.  Automated Generation of Context-Aware Tests , 2007, 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'07).

[22]  Patrick D. McDaniel,et al.  Understanding Android Security , 2009, IEEE Security & Privacy Magazine.