An Empirical Investigation of Performance Overhead in Cross-Platform Mobile Development Frameworks

The heterogeneity of the leading mobile platforms in terms of user interfaces, user experience, programming language, and ecosystem have made cross-platform development frameworks popular. These aid the creation of mobile applications – apps – that can be executed across the target platforms (typically Android and iOS) with minimal to no platform-specific code. Due to the cost- and time-saving possibilities introduced through adopting such a framework, researchers and practitioners alike have taken an interest in the underlying technologies. Examining the body of knowledge, we, nonetheless, frequently encounter discussions on the drawbacks of these frameworks, especially with regard to the performance of the apps they generate. Motivated by the ongoing discourse and a lack of empirical evidence, we scrutinised the essential piece of the cross-platform frameworks: the bridge enabling cross-platform code to communicate with the underlying operating system and device hardware APIs. The study we present in the article benchmarks and measures the performance of this bridge to reveal its associated overhead in Android apps. The development of the artifacts for this experiment was conducted using five cross-platform development frameworks to generate Android apps, in addition to a baseline native Android app implementation. Our results indicate that – for Android apps – the use of cross-platform frameworks for the development of mobile apps may lead to decreased performance compared to the native development approach. Nevertheless, certain cross-platform frameworks can perform equally well or even better than native on certain metrics which highlights the importance of well-defined technical requirements and specifications for deliberate selection of a cross-platform framework or overall development approach.publishedVersio

Framework for the Integration of Mobile Device Features in PLM

Currently, companies have covered their business processes with stationary workstations while mobile business applications have limited relevance. Companies can cover their overall business processes more time-efficiently and cost-effectively when they integrate mobile users in workflows using mobile device features. The objective is a framework that can be used to model and control business applications for PLM processes using mobile device features to allow a totally new user experience

Measuring a HTML5 Hybrid Application's Native Bridge on iOS

Mobile apps are intended to be created with mobile platforms development tools and programming languages. This native development requires specialized skills and can therefore be prohibitively expensive. HTML5 hybrid app development is a popular alternative for native mobile app development. This development model allows developers to use standard web technologies and the end result can be indistinguishable from a native app by its visual representation. This model enables faster iteration speed, allows any web developer to build apps and supports simultaneous cross-platform development. However, since the web technology is not as performant as native, these hybrid apps have often been criticized for being noticeably 'laggy' by the app developer community and end users. One of the key components that affects HTML5 hybrid apps performance is the native bridge used in the app. This component bridges the embedded HTML5 application to the device features that wouldn't otherwise be available (such as writing to a file on the device's file system). The native bridge is one of the few components that a developer can freely change. Selecting the best native bridge for the app's needs is important as an inefficient native bridge can cause human noticeable delay in the app. The performance of native bridges has been acknowledged in academia and industry, but very little researched systematically. This thesis introduces a systematic method to evaluate native bridges performance. Along with this method, this thesis also describes a new open source tool implementing this method for benchmarking different native bridges. This tool hosts reference implementation for 32 native bridges. Example results from a test suite that tested all implemented native bridges with two embeddable web view engines (UIWebView and WKWebView) on four distinct iOS devices (two iPads, iPhone and iPod Touch) are evaluated. The results show that the majority of the known native bridge methods can cause human noticeable visual and auditory latency. It is also indicated that the performance is largely affected by app usage patterns. The slowest measured native bridge was over two times slower (from no delay to significant user interface delay) than the fastest one

An empirical investigation of performance overhead in cross-platform mobile development frameworks

The heterogeneity of the leading mobile platforms in terms of user interfaces, user experience, programming language, and ecosystem have made cross-platform development frameworks popular. These aid the creation of mobile applications – apps – that can be executed across the target platforms (typically Android and iOS) with minimal to no platform-specific code. Due to the cost- and time-saving possibilities introduced through adopting such a framework, researchers and practitioners alike have taken an interest in the underlying technologies. Examining the body of knowledge, we, nonetheless, frequently encounter discussions on the drawbacks of these frameworks, especially with regard to the performance of the apps they generate. Motivated by the ongoing discourse and a lack of empirical evidence, we scrutinised the essential piece of the cross-platform frameworks: the bridge enabling cross-platform code to communicate with the underlying operating system and device hardware APIs. The study we present in the article benchmarks and measures the performance of this bridge to reveal its associated overhead in Android apps. The development of the artifacts for this experiment was conducted using five cross-platform development frameworks to generate Android apps, in addition to a baseline native Android app implementation. Our results indicate that – for Android apps – the use of cross-platform frameworks for the development of mobile apps may lead to decreased performance compared to the native development approach. Nevertheless, certain cross-platform frameworks can perform equally well or even better than native on certain metrics which highlights the importance of well-defined technical requirements and specifications for deliberate selection of a cross-platform framework or overall development approach

A Mobile Holistic Enterprise Transformation Framework

Mobile phones and tablets shipments are surpassing those of the PC category, as well as in relation to Internet usage as of 2016; all details which have made mobile adoption a priority for many enterprises and a challenge for them as well. Many enterprises have fallen into a paradox of spending on creating and updating mobile services, and gaining less than expected in return. Reasons for this include the lack of vision, and the lack of a clearly defined, well communicated mobile strategy. Enterprise Architecture ‘EA’ facilitates a successful transformation by controlling and managing the transitions in order to arrive at a clearly defined future state. It is regarded as the science of change to many. However, EA frameworks are very comprehensive and require weeks of training and resources, and are often too generic for mobile transformation. Therefore, an EA-based mobile holistic enterprise framework has been developed to support enterprises in making mobile initiatives a priority. The proposed framework ensures a clearly defined, well-communicated, holistic future state that is continually evaluated, as opposed to many of the existing frameworks. The proposed Mobile Holistic Enterprise Architecture Framework - ‘MHETF’ - is based on the realisation of the capabilities of smartphones that are aimed at individual average consumers (the backbone of the current mobile trend). The capabilities are categorised and translated into four sets of services categories for business use. They are linked to another two components of the framework which are: (i) the categorisation of goals and objectives that are incorporated into the Balanced Scorecard for evaluation at a later stage in planning, and continually referred to during transitions and (ii) the categorisation of the implementation forms (categorisation of end solutions’ functionalities). The framework is supported by EA inter-operability and maturity models to ensure continuity and alignment with the existing initiatives, the enterprise’s strategic objectives, and the change required in the scope of transformation. An evaluation for the available enterprise architecture frameworks was carried out and resulted in the selection of The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF). The decision was also commended by the participants in the case study evaluation due to their familiarity with this framework, which is being adopted as the Saudi E Government Standard in contrast to the other major frameworks of Zachman and Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA). MHETF has been applied to three case studies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; two applications for a leading national outsourcing company, and the third for the outpatient clinics in a large hospital in the capital city of Riyadh. The results have shown major improvements in the four goal areas of mobile transformation; productivity, processes, satisfaction improvement and facilitating new opportunities. Eventually, the final evolution has shown that the participants are satisfied with the framework overall, and indicates that the framework changed their perspective of the power of mobile applications significantly, is relatively easy to understand, and that they are planning to adopt it for future mobile initiatives

A Mobile Holistic Enterprise Transformation Framework

Mobile phones and tablets shipments are surpassing those of the PC category, as well as in relation to Internet usage as of 2016; all details which have made mobile adoption a priority for many enterprises and a challenge for them as well. Many enterprises have fallen into a paradox of spending on creating and updating mobile services, and gaining less than expected in return. Reasons for this include the lack of vision, and the lack of a clearly defined, well communicated mobile strategy. Enterprise Architecture ‘EA’ facilitates a successful transformation by controlling and managing the transitions in order to arrive at a clearly defined future state. It is regarded as the science of change to many. However, EA frameworks are very comprehensive and require weeks of training and resources, and are often too generic for mobile transformation. Therefore, an EA-based mobile holistic enterprise framework has been developed to support enterprises in making mobile initiatives a priority. The proposed framework ensures a clearly defined, well-communicated, holistic future state that is continually evaluated, as opposed to many of the existing frameworks. The proposed Mobile Holistic Enterprise Architecture Framework - ‘MHETF’ - is based on the realisation of the capabilities of smartphones that are aimed at individual average consumers (the backbone of the current mobile trend). The capabilities are categorised and translated into four sets of services categories for business use. They are linked to another two components of the framework which are: (i) the categorisation of goals and objectives that are incorporated into the Balanced Scorecard for evaluation at a later stage in planning, and continually referred to during transitions and (ii) the categorisation of the implementation forms (categorisation of end solutions’ functionalities). The framework is supported by EA inter-operability and maturity models to ensure continuity and alignment with the existing initiatives, the enterprise’s strategic objectives, and the change required in the scope of transformation. An evaluation for the available enterprise architecture frameworks was carried out and resulted in the selection of The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF). The decision was also commended by the participants in the case study evaluation due to their familiarity with this framework, which is being adopted as the Saudi E Government Standard in contrast to the other major frameworks of Zachman and Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA). MHETF has been applied to three case studies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; two applications for a leading national outsourcing company, and the third for the outpatient clinics in a large hospital in the capital city of Riyadh. The results have shown major improvements in the four goal areas of mobile transformation; productivity, processes, satisfaction improvement and facilitating new opportunities. Eventually, the final evolution has shown that the participants are satisfied with the framework overall, and indicates that the framework changed their perspective of the power of mobile applications significantly, is relatively easy to understand, and that they are planning to adopt it for future mobile initiatives

Framework for the Integration of Mobile Device Features in PLM

Currently, companies have covered their business processes with stationary workstations while mobile business applications have limited relevance. Companies can cover their overall business processes more time-efficiently and cost-effectively when they integrate mobile users in workflows using mobile device features. The objective is a framework that can be used to model and control business applications for PLM processes using mobile device features to allow a totally new user experience

Occupational Health and Safety in the Healthcare Sector

Healthcare workers are exposed to several different occupational risk factors, and they pay an important tribute in terms of occupational diseases and work-related injuries. Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic has focused the attention on the problem of the infectious risk, which is certainly among the risks typically expected and specifically recognized for the health personnel, but also other occupational risks should not be overlooked, as, e.g., the risks associated with work-organization factors and with the exposure to chemical and physical agents. The health consequences associated with the exposure to all these factors have relevant impacts in terms of induced diseases, DALYs, sickness absence from work and costs for the health systems. According to these premises, this reprint has collected manuscripts addressing topics related to the prevention of the occupational risks in the healthcare sector, including original articles and reviews on the prevention of work-related illnesses and injuries of the health personnel, as well as on the evaluation of the risks in the healthcare workplaces, and on the topics of risk perception and of the knowledge and attitudes of the workers towards the preventive procedures and the use of protections. The themes of the prevention of occupational infectious risk, biomechanical overload of the musculoskeletal system and work-related psychosocial factors are specifically discussed in the papers collected

Occupational Health and Safety in the Healthcare Sector

Healthcare workers are exposed to several different occupational risk factors, and they pay an important tribute in terms of occupational diseases and work-related injuries. Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic has focused the attention on the problem of the infectious risk, which is certainly among the risks typically expected and specifically recognized for the health personnel, but also other occupational risks should not be overlooked, such as, e.g., the risks associated with work-organization factors and with the exposure to chemical and physical agents. The health consequences associated with the exposure to all these factors have relevant impacts in terms of induced diseases, DALYs, sickness absence from work and costs for the health systems. According to these premises, this reprint has collected manuscripts addressing topics related to the prevention of the occupational risks in the healthcare sector, including original articles and reviews on the prevention of work-related illnesses and injuries of the health personnel, as well as on the evaluation of the risks in the healthcare workplaces, and on the topics of risk perception and of the knowledge and attitudes of the workers towards the preventive procedures and the use of protections. The themes of the prevention of occupational infectious risk, biomechanical overload of the musculoskeletal system and work-related psychosocial factors are specifically discussed in the papers collected