A Framework for Model-Driven Development of Mobile Applications with Context Support

Model-driven development (MDD) of software systems has been a serious trend in different application domains over the last 15 years. While technologies, platforms, and architectural paradigms have changed several times since model-driven development processes were first introduced, their applicability and usefulness are discussed every time a new technological trend appears. Looking at the rapid market penetration of smartphones, software engineers are curious about how model-driven development technologies can deal with this novel and emergent domain of software engineering (SE). Indeed, software engineering of mobile applications provides many challenges that model-driven development can address. Model-driven development uses a platform independent model as a crucial artifact. Such a model usually follows a domain-specific modeling language and separates the business concerns from the technical concerns. These platform-independent models can be reused for generating native program code for several mobile software platforms. However, a major drawback of model-driven development is that infrastructure developers must provide a fairly sophisticated model-driven development infrastructure before mobile application developers can create mobile applications in a model-driven way. Hence, the first part of this thesis deals with designing a model-driven development infrastructure for mobile applications. We will follow a rigorous design process comprising a domain analysis, the design of a domain-specific modeling language, and the development of the corresponding model editors. To ensure that the code generators produce high-quality application code and the resulting mobile applications follow a proper architectural design, we will analyze several representative reference applications beforehand. Thus, the reader will get an insight into both the features of mobile applications and the steps that are required to design and implement a model-driven development infrastructure. As a result of the domain analysis and the analysis of the reference applications, we identified context-awareness as a further important feature of mobile applications. Current software engineering tools do not sufficiently support designing and implementing of context-aware mobile applications. Although these tools (e.g., middleware approaches) support the definition and the collection of contextual information, the adaptation of the mobile application must often be implemented by hand at a low abstraction level by the mobile application developers. Thus, the second part of this thesis demonstrates how context-aware mobile applications can be designed more easily by using a model-driven development approach. Techniques such as model transformation and model interpretation are used to adapt mobile applications to different contexts at design time or runtime. Moreover, model analysis and model-based simulation help mobile application developers to evaluate a designed mobile application (i.e., app model) prior to its generation and deployment with respected to certain contexts. We demonstrate the usefulness and applicability of the model-driven development infrastructure we developed by seven case examples. These showcases demonstrate the designing of mobile applications in different domains. We demonstrate the scalability of our model-driven development infrastructure with several performance tests, focusing on the generation time of mobile applications, as well as their runtime performance. Moreover, the usability was successfully evaluated during several hands-on training sessions by real mobile application developers with different skill levels

Mobile platforms and multi-mobile platform development

Mobile devices and mobile applications have a significant effect on the present and on the future of the software industry. The diversity of mobile platforms necessitates the development of the same mobile application for all major mobile platforms, which requires considerable development effort. Mobile application developers are multiplatform developers, but they prioritize the platforms, therefore, not all platforms are equally important for them. Appropriate methods, processes and tools are required to support the development in order to achieve better productivity. The main motivation of our research activity is to provide a method, which increases the development productivity and the quality of the applications and also reduces the time to market. The paper discusses our model-driven results on the field of multi-mobile platform development

Extending the Interaction Flow Modeling Language (IFML) for Model Driven Development of Mobile Applications Front End

International audienceFront-end design of mobile applications is a complex and multidisciplinary task, where many perspectives intersect and the user experience must be perfectly tailored to the application objectives. However, development of mobile user interactions is still largely a manual task, which yields to high risks of errors, inconsistencies and ine ciencies. In this paper we propose a model-driven approach to mobile application development based on the IFML standard. We propose an extension of the Interaction Flow Modeling Language tailored to mobile applications and we describe our implementation experience that comprises the development of automatic code generators for cross-platform mobile applications based on HTML5, CSS and JavaScript optimized for the Apache Cordova framework. We show the approach at work on a popular mobile application, we report on the application of the approach on an industrial application development project and we provide a productivity comparison with traditional approaches

Gade4all: Developing Multi-platform Videogames based on Domain Specific Languages and Model Driven Engineering

The development of applications for mobile devices is a constantly growing market which and more and more enterprises support the development of applications for this kind of devices. In that sense, videogames for mobile devices have become very popular worldwide and are now part of highly profitable and competitive industry. Due to the diversity of platforms and mobile devices and the complexity of this kind of applications, the development time and the number of errors within that development process have increased. The productivity of the developers has also decreased due to the necessity of using many programming languages in the development process. One of the most popular strategies is to employ specialized people to perform the development tasks more efficiently, but this involves an increase of the costs, which makes some applications economically unviable. In this article we present the Gade4all Project, consisting in a new platform that aims to facilitate the development of videogames and entertainment software through the use of Domain Specific Languages and Model Driven Engineering. This tool makes possible for users without previous knowledge in the field of software development to create 2D videogames for multiplatform mobile devices in a simple and innovative way

Process-Driven Data Collection with Smart Mobile Devices

Paper-based questionnaires are often used for collecting data in application domains like healthcare, psychology or education. Such paper-based approach, however, results in a massive workload for processing and analyzing the collected data. In order to relieve domain experts from these manual tasks, we propose a process-driven approach for implementing as well as running respective mobile business applications. In particular, the logic of a questionnaire is described in terms of an explicit process model. Based on this process model, in turn, multiple questionnaire instances may be created and enacted by a process engine. For this purpose, we present a generic architecture and demonstrate the development of electronic questionnaires in the context of scientific studies. Further, we discuss the major challenges and lessons learned. In this context the presented process-driven approach offers promising perspectives in respect to the development of mobile data collection applications

A Configurator Component for End-User Defined Mobile Data Collection Processes

The widespread dissemination of smart mobile devices offers promising perspectives for collecting huge amounts of data. When realizing mobile data collection applications (e.g., to support clinical trials), challenging issues arise. For example, many real-world projects require support for heterogeneous mobile operating systems. Usually, existing data collection approaches are based on specifically tailored mobile applications. As a drawback, changes of a data collection procedure require costly code adaptations. To remedy this drawback, we implemented a model-driven approach that enables end-users to realize mobile data collection applications themselves. This paper demonstrates the developed configurator component, which enables domain experts to implement digital questionnaires. Altogether, the configurator component allows for the fast development of questionnaires and hence for collecting data in large-scale scenarios using smart mobile devices

Performance Comparison of Contention- and Schedule-based MAC Protocols in Urban Parking Sensor Networks

Network traffic model is a critical problem for urban applications, mainly because of its diversity and node density. As wireless sensor network is highly concerned with the development of smart cities, careful consideration to traffic model helps choose appropriate protocols and adapt network parameters to reach best performances on energy-latency tradeoffs. In this paper, we compare the performance of two off-the-shelf medium access control protocols on two different kinds of traffic models, and then evaluate their application-end information delay and energy consumption while varying traffic parameters and network density. From the simulation results, we highlight some limits induced by network density and occurrence frequency of event-driven applications. When it comes to realtime urban services, a protocol selection shall be taken into account - even dynamically - with a special attention to energy-delay tradeoff. To this end, we provide several insights on parking sensor networks.Comment: ACM International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies for Smart Cities (WiMobCity) (2014

Development of Mobile Data Collection Applications by Domain Experts: Experimental Results from a Usability Study

Despite their drawbacks, paper-based questionnaires are still used to collect data in many application domains. In the QuestionSys project, we develop an advanced framework that enables domain experts to transform paper-based instruments to mobile data collection applications, which then run on smart mobile devices. The framework empowers domain experts to develop robust mobile data collection applications on their own without the need to involve programmers. To realize this vision, a configurator component applying a model-driven approach is developed. As this component shall relieve domain experts from technical issues, it has to be proven that domain experts are actually able to use the configurator properly. The experiment presented in this paper investigates the mental efforts for creating such data collection applications by comparing novices and experts. Results reveal that even novices are able to model instruments with an acceptable number of errors. Altogether, the QuestionSys framework empowers domain experts to develop sophisticated mobile data collection applications by orders of magnitude faster compared to current mobile application development practices

End-User Programming of Mobile Services: Empowering Domain Experts to Implement Mobile Data Collection Applications

The widespread use of smart mobile devices (e.g., in clinical trials or online surveys) offers promising perspectives with respect to the controlled collection of high-quality data. The design, implementation and deployment of such mobile data collection applications, however, is challenging in several respects. First, various mobile operating systems need to be supported, taking the short release cycles of vendors into account as well. Second, domain-specific requirements need to be flexibly aligned with mobile application development. Third, usability styleguides need to be obeyed. Altogether, this turns both programming and maintaining mobile applications into a costly, time-consuming, and error-prone endeavor. To remedy these drawbacks, a model-driven framework empowering domain experts to implement robust mobile data collection applications in an intuitive way was realized. The design of this end-user programming framework is based on experiences gathered in real-life mobile data collection projects. Facets of various stakeholders involved in such projects are discussed and an overall architecture as well as its components are presented. In particular, it is shown how the framework enables domain experts (i.e., end users) to flexibly implement mobile data collection applications on their own. Overall, the framework allows for the effective support of mobile services in a multitude of application domains