Domain-Specific Modeling and Code Generation for Cross-Platform Multi-Device Mobile Apps

Nowadays, mobile devices constitute the most common computing device. This new computing model has brought intense competition among hardware and software providers who are continuously introducing increasingly powerful mobile devices and innovative OSs into the market. In consequence, cross-platform and multi-device development has become a priority for software companies that want to reach the widest possible audience. However, developing an application for several platforms implies high costs and technical complexity. Currently, there are several frameworks that allow cross-platform application development. However, these approaches still require manual programming. My research proposes to face the challenge of the mobile revolution by exploiting abstraction, modeling and code generation, in the spirit of the modern paradigm of Model Driven Engineering

Testing variability-intensive systems using automated analysis: an application to Android

Software product lines are used to develop a set of software products that, while being different, share a common set of features. Feature models are used as a compact representation of all the products (e.g., possible configurations) of the product line. The number of products that a feature model encodes may grow exponentially with the number of features. This increases the cost of testing the products within a product line. Some proposals deal with this problem by reducing the testing space using different techniques. However, a daunting challenge is to explore how the cost and value of test cases can be modeled and optimized in order to have lower-cost testing processes. In this paper, we present TESting vAriAbiLity Intensive Systems (TESALIA), an approach that uses automated analysis of feature models to optimize the testing of variability-intensive systems. We model test value and cost as feature attributes, and then we use a constraint satisfaction solver to prune, prioritize and package product line tests complementing prior work in the software product line testing literature. A prototype implementation of TESALIA is used for validation in an Android example showing the benefits of maximizing the mobile market share (the value function) while meeting a budgetary constraint.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2012-32273Junta de Andalucía TIC-5906Junta de Andalucía TIC-186

Progressive Web Apps: the Definite Approach to Cross-Platform Development?

Although development practices for apps have matured, cross-platform development remains a prominent topic. Typically, apps should always support both Android and iOS devices. They ought to run smoothly on various hardware, and be compatible with a host of platform versions. Additionally, device categories beyond smartphone and tablets have emerged, which makes multi-platform support even trickier. Truly developing an app once and serving the multitude of possible targets remains an issue despite having cross-platform frameworks that are acknowledged by practice and research. The technology unifier remains to be found, but Progressive Web Apps (PWA) might be a step towards it. In this paper, we analyse the foundations of PWAs in cross-platform development and scrutinize the status quo of current possibilities. Based on our observations, we investigate unified development, and discuss open questions. We seek to stimulate interest and narrow the immense gap that has arisen since industry started to embrace PWAs

Topic driven testing

Modern interactive applications offer so many interaction opportunities that automated exploration and testing becomes practically impossible without some domain specific guidance towards relevant functionality. In this dissertation, we present a novel fundamental graphical user interface testing method called topic-driven testing. We mine the semantic meaning of interactive elements, guide testing, and identify core functionality of applications. The semantic interpretation is close to human understanding and allows us to learn specifications and transfer knowledge across multiple applications independent of the underlying device, platform, programming language, or technology stack—to the best of our knowledge a unique feature of our technique. Our tool ATTABOY is able to take an existing Web application test suite say from Amazon, execute it on ebay, and thus guide testing to relevant core functionality. Tested on different application domains such as eCommerce, news pages, mail clients, it can trans- fer on average sixty percent of the tested application behavior to new apps—without any human intervention. On top of that, topic-driven testing can go with even more vague instructions of how-to descriptions or use-case descriptions. Given an instruction, say “add item to shopping cart”, it tests the specified behavior in an application–both in a browser as well as in mobile apps. It thus improves state-of-the-art UI testing frame- works, creates change resilient UI tests, and lays the foundation for learning, transfer- ring, and enforcing common application behavior. The prototype is up to five times faster than existing random testing frameworks and tests functions that are hard to cover by non-trained approaches.Moderne interaktive Anwendungen bieten so viele Interaktionsmöglichkeiten, dass eine vollständige automatische Exploration und das Testen aller Szenarien praktisch unmöglich ist. Stattdessen muss die Testprozedur auf relevante Kernfunktionalität ausgerichtet werden. Diese Arbeit stellt ein neues fundamentales Testprinzip genannt thematisches Testen vor, das beliebige Anwendungen u ̈ber die graphische Oberfläche testet. Wir untersuchen die semantische Bedeutung von interagierbaren Elementen um die Kernfunktionenen von Anwendungen zu identifizieren und entsprechende Tests zu erzeugen. Statt typischen starren Testinstruktionen orientiert sich diese Art von Tests an menschlichen Anwendungsfällen in natürlicher Sprache. Dies erlaubt es, Software Spezifikationen zu erlernen und Wissen von einer Anwendung auf andere zu übertragen unabhängig von der Anwendungsart, der Programmiersprache, dem Testgerät oder der -Plattform. Nach unserem Kenntnisstand ist unser Ansatz der Erste dieser Art. Wir präsentieren ATTABOY, ein Programm, das eine existierende Testsammlung für eine Webanwendung (z.B. für Amazon) nimmt und in einer beliebigen anderen Anwendung (sagen wir ebay) ausführt. Dadurch werden Tests für Kernfunktionen generiert. Bei der ersten Ausführung auf Anwendungen aus den Domänen Online Shopping, Nachrichtenseiten und eMail, erzeugt der Prototyp sechzig Prozent der Tests automatisch. Ohne zusätzlichen manuellen Aufwand. Darüber hinaus interpretiert themen- getriebenes Testen auch vage Anweisungen beispielsweise von How-to Anleitungen oder Anwendungsbeschreibungen. Eine Anweisung wie "Fügen Sie das Produkt in den Warenkorb hinzu" testet das entsprechende Verhalten in der Anwendung. Sowohl im Browser, als auch in einer mobilen Anwendung. Die erzeugten Tests sind robuster und effektiver als vergleichbar erzeugte Tests. Der Prototyp testet die Zielfunktionalität fünf mal schneller und testet dabei Funktionen die durch nicht spezialisierte Ansätze kaum zu erreichen sind

Jukebox: An Adaptive Collaborative Open Application Development Ecosystem

In this day and age products are expected to be delivered to the right consumer at the right time through the right channel, in a way that inspires, informs and excites them. An adaptive, collaborative, open, and flexible mobile application solution has been designed for implementation. This solution undertakes to promote a broad level of inter and intra industry inclusivity, increase efficiency and efficacy, reduce total cost of operations, secure high transactional revenues, optimally channelize investments for better returns with minimum data pilferage and stimulates value for the end-users. The solution uses a jukebox metaphor and proposes conceptual workflows, architectures, protocols, and an application development ecosystem. These artefacts are a call for standards that could potentially evoke a paradigm change in mobile app development and operations

Desarrollo dirigido por modelos de aplicaciones móviles multiplataforma a partir de un conjunto de reglas heurísticas basadas en esquemas preconceptuales

ilustraciones, diagramas, tablasModel driven development (MDD) approaches aim for increasing development team productivity and decreasing software time-to-market. Such approaches comprise a set of model-to-model and model-to-text transformation rules for generating the source code based on models. Some authors propose MDD approaches for cross-platform mobile applications. So, we perform a systematic literature review looking for MDD approaches for cross-platform mobile applications, having as a result 39 primary studies grouped on 19 different MDD approaches. We observe 100.0 % approaches lack close-to-natural modeling languages, 36.8 % approaches lack design patterns, and 84.2 % lack usability features. In addition, 42.1 % approaches use out-of-date programming languages as automation result. Therefore, we propose an MDD approach for cross-platform mobile applications by using pre-conceptual schemas. Such schemas allow for guaranteeing a close-to-natural modeling language, including design patterns, and including usability features. Moreover, we complete the UN-LEND specification language as an intermediate model between pre-conceptual schemas and cross-platform mobile applications, avoiding the usage of out-of-date programming languages. Then, we design a pre-conceptual-schema-based metamodel in order to develop an MDD prototype based on the Eclipse Modeling Framework and XPAND. We propose a set of heuristic rules divided into model, view, and controller layers, having the pre-conceptual schema as a rule left-hand side, UN-LEND as an intermediate model, and Java-Android and Swift-iOS code as a rule right-hand side. We validate our approach by using a case of study about MobileSQUARE: an Android application for requirements gathering based on a question answering model. As a result, we automatically generate 90.86 % of the MobileSQUARE application by using our approach. Specifically, we observe model layer is close to be fully automated having 98.95 % as automation percentage compared to view and controller layers with 82.31 % and 84.56 % respectively. We expect researchers and software engineering practitioners increase their productivity and decrease software time-to-market based on our results. We identify some future work and challenges such as: including Programming eXperience heuristics in the resulting code (PX); allowing round-trip transformations between code, UN-LEND, and pre-conceptual schemas; including rules related to pre-conceptual schema vectors, matrices, and achievement relationships; improving controller and view layers related rules to increase the automation percentage; developing a compiler for UN-LEND models.Los enfoques de desarrollo dirigidos por modelos (MDD) tienen como objetivo aumentar la productividad del equipo de desarrollo y reducir el tiempo de comercialización del software. Algunos autores proponen enfoques MDD para aplicaciones móviles multiplataforma. Por ello, se realiza una revisión sistemática de la literatura en busca de enfoques MDD para aplicaciones móviles multiplataforma, teniendo como resultado 39 estudios primarios agrupados en 19 enfoques MDD diferentes. Se observa que el 100,0 % de los enfoques carecen de lenguajes de modelado cercanos al natural, el 36,8 % de los enfoques carecen de patrones de diseño y el 84,2 % carecen de características de usabilidad. Además, el 42,1 % de los enfoques utilizan lenguajes de programación obsoletos como resultado de la automatización. Por lo tanto, se propone un enfoque MDD para aplicaciones móviles multiplataforma mediante el uso de esquemas preconceptuales. Estos esquemas permiten garantizar un lenguaje de modelado cercano al natural, incluir patrones de diseño e incluir características de usabilidad. Además, se completa el lenguaje de especificación UN-LEND como modelo intermedio entre los esquemas preconceptuales y las aplicaciones móviles multiplataforma, evitando el uso de lenguajes de programación desfasados. Luego, se diseña un metamodelo del esquema preconceptual para desarrollar un prototipo de MDD basado en el Eclipse Modeling Framework y XPAND. Se propone un conjunto de reglas heurísticas divididas en las capas modelo, vista, y controlador, teniendo al esquema preconceptual como el lado izquierdo de la regla, UN-LEND como modelo intermedio, y el código Android Java e iOS Swift como el lado derecho de la regla. Se valida este enfoque utilizando un caso de estudio sobre MobileSQUARE: una aplicación Android para la recopilación de requisitos basada en un modelo de respuesta a preguntas. Como resultado, se genera automáticamente el 90,86 % de la aplicación MobileS-QUARE utilizando las reglas propuestas. En concreto, se observa que la capa model está cerca de la automatización total teniendo un 98,95 % como porcentaje de automatización en comparación con las capas vista y controlador con un 82,31 % y 84,56 % respectivamente. Se espera que los investigadores y los profesionales de la ingeniería del software aumenten su productividad y reduzcan el tiempo de comercialización del software basándose en estos resultados. Como resultado de esta Tesis de Maestría, se identifican algunas propuestas y retos futuros como: incluir heurísticas de Experiencia del Programador (PX) en el código resultante; permitir las transformaciones de ida y vuelta entre código, UN-LEND y los esquemas preconceptuales; incluir reglas relacionadas con los vectores, la matrices y las relaciones de logro de los esquemas preconceptuales; y desarrollar un compilador para los modelos UN-LEND. (Texto tomado de la fuente)MaestríaMagister en Ingeniería - Ingeniería de SistemasSoftware engineeringÁrea Curricular de Ingeniería de Sistemas e Informátic

A taxonomy of approaches for integrating attack awareness in applications

Software applications are subject to an increasing number of attacks, resulting in data breaches and financial damage. Many solutions have been considered to help mitigate these attacks, such as the integration of attack-awareness techniques. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy illustrating how existing attack awareness techniques can be integrated into applications. This work provides a guide for security researchers and developers, aiding them when choosing the approach which best fits the needs of their application

IoTSan: Fortifying the Safety of IoT Systems

Today's IoT systems include event-driven smart applications (apps) that interact with sensors and actuators. A problem specific to IoT systems is that buggy apps, unforeseen bad app interactions, or device/communication failures, can cause unsafe and dangerous physical states. Detecting flaws that lead to such states, requires a holistic view of installed apps, component devices, their configurations, and more importantly, how they interact. In this paper, we design IoTSan, a novel practical system that uses model checking as a building block to reveal "interaction-level" flaws by identifying events that can lead the system to unsafe states. In building IoTSan, we design novel techniques tailored to IoT systems, to alleviate the state explosion associated with model checking. IoTSan also automatically translates IoT apps into a format amenable to model checking. Finally, to understand the root cause of a detected vulnerability, we design an attribution mechanism to identify problematic and potentially malicious apps. We evaluate IoTSan on the Samsung SmartThings platform. From 76 manually configured systems, IoTSan detects 147 vulnerabilities. We also evaluate IoTSan with malicious SmartThings apps from a previous effort. IoTSan detects the potential safety violations and also effectively attributes these apps as malicious.Comment: Proc. of the 14th ACM CoNEXT, 201

A Model-Driven Cross-Platform App Development Process for Heterogeneous Device Classes

App development has gained importance since the advent of smartphones to enable the ubiquitous access to information. Until now, multi- or cross-platform approaches are usually limited to different platforms for smartphones and tablets. With the recent trend towards app-enabled mobile devices, a plethora of heterogeneous devices such as smartwatches and smart TVs continues to emerge. For app developers, the situation resembles the early days of smartphones but worsened by the widely differing hardware, platform capabilities, and usage patterns. In order to tackle the identified challenges of app development beyond the boundaries of individual device classes, a systematic process built on the model-driven paradigm is presented. In addition, we demonstrate its applicability using the MAML framework to create interoperable business apps for both smartphones and smartwatches from a common, platform-independent model