Correlating context-awareness and mutation analysis for pervasive computing systems

Proceedings of the International Conference on Quality Software, 2010, p. 151-160Pervasive computing systems often use middleware as a means to communicate with the changing environment. However, the interactions with the context-aware middleware as well as the interactions among applications sharing the same middleware may introduce faults that are difficult to reveal by existing testing techniques. Our previous work proposed the notion of context diversity as a metric to measure the degree of changes in test inputs for pervasive software. In this paper, we present a case study on how much context diversity for test cases relates to fault-based mutants in pervasive software. Our empirical results show that conventional mutation operators can generate sufficient candidate mutants to support test effectiveness evaluation of pervasive software, and test cases with higher context diversity values tend to have higher mean mutation scores. On the other hand, for test cases sharing the same context diversity, their mutation scores can vary significantly in terms of standard derivations © 2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Model Driven Mutation Applied to Adaptative Systems Testing

Dynamically Adaptive Systems modify their behav- ior and structure in response to changes in their surrounding environment and according to an adaptation logic. Critical sys- tems increasingly incorporate dynamic adaptation capabilities; examples include disaster relief and space exploration systems. In this paper, we focus on mutation testing of the adaptation logic. We propose a fault model for adaptation logics that classifies faults into environmental completeness and adaptation correct- ness. Since there are several adaptation logic languages relying on the same underlying concepts, the fault model is expressed independently from specific adaptation languages. Taking benefit from model-driven engineering technology, we express these common concepts in a metamodel and define the operational semantics of mutation operators at this level. Mutation is applied on model elements and model transformations are used to propagate these changes to a given adaptation policy in the chosen formalism. Preliminary results on an adaptive web server highlight the difficulty of killing mutants for adaptive systems, and thus the difficulty of generating efficient tests.Comment: IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation, Mutation Analysis Workshop (Mutation 2011), Berlin : Allemagne (2011

Improving the effectiveness of testing pervasive software via context diversity

Context-aware pervasive software is responsive to various contexts and their changes. A faulty implementation of the context-aware features may lead to unpredictable behavior with adverse effects. In software testing, one of the most important research issues is to determine the sufficiency of a test suite to verify the software under test. Existing adequacy criteria for testing traditional software, however, have not explored the dimension of serial test inputs and have not considered context changes when constructing test suites. In this article, we define the concept of context diversity to capture the extent of context changes in serial inputs and propose three strategies to study how context diversity may improve the effectiveness of the data-flow testing criteria. Our case study shows that the strategy that uses test cases with higher context diversity can significantly improve the effectiveness of existing data-flow testing criteria for context-aware pervasive software. In addition, test suites with higher context diversity are found to execute significantly longer paths, which may provide a clue that reveals why context diversity can contribute to the improvement of effectiveness of test suites. © 2014 ACM.postprin

Context awareness for collaborative learning with uncertainty management

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Context-awareness for mobile sensing: a survey and future directions

The evolution of smartphones together with increasing computational power have empowered developers to create innovative context-aware applications for recognizing user related social and cognitive activities in any situation and at any location. The existence and awareness of the context provides the capability of being conscious of physical environments or situations around mobile device users. This allows network services to respond proactively and intelligently based on such awareness. The key idea behind context-aware applications is to encourage users to collect, analyze and share local sensory knowledge in the purpose for a large scale community use by creating a smart network. The desired network is capable of making autonomous logical decisions to actuate environmental objects, and also assist individuals. However, many open challenges remain, which are mostly arisen due to the middleware services provided in mobile devices have limited resources in terms of power, memory and bandwidth. Thus, it becomes critically important to study how the drawbacks can be elaborated and resolved, and at the same time better understand the opportunities for the research community to contribute to the context-awareness. To this end, this paper surveys the literature over the period of 1991-2014 from the emerging concepts to applications of context-awareness in mobile platforms by providing up-to-date research and future research directions. Moreover, it points out the challenges faced in this regard and enlighten them by proposing possible solutions

Filtering, Piracy Surveillance and Disobedience

There has always been a cyclical relationship between the prevention of piracy and the protection of civil liberties. While civil liberties advocates previously warned about the aggressive nature of copyright protection initiatives, more recently, a number of major players in the music industry have eventually ceded to less direct forms of control over consumer behavior. As more aggressive forms of consumer control, like litigation, have receded, we have also seen a rise in more passive forms of consumer surveillance. Moreover, even as technology has developed more perfect means for filtering and surveillance over online piracy, a number of major players have opted in favor of “tolerated use,” a term coined by Professor Tim Wu to denote the allowance of uses that may be otherwise infringing, but that are allowed to exist for public use and enjoyment. Thus, while the eventual specter of copyright enforcement and monitoring remains a pervasive digital reality, the market may fuel a broad degree of consumer freedom through the toleration or taxation of certain kinds of activities. This Article is meant largely to address and to evaluate these shifts by drawing attention to the unique confluence of these two important moments: the growth of tolerated uses, coupled with an increasing trend towards more passive forms of piracy surveillance in light of the balance between copyright enforcement and civil liberties. The content industries may draw upon a broad definition of disobedience in their campaigns to educate the public about copyright law, but the market’s allowance of DRM-free content suggests an altogether different definition. The divide in turn between copyright enforcement and civil liberties results in a perfect storm of uncertainty, suggesting the development of an even further division between the role of the law and the role of the marketplace in copyright enforcement and innovation, respectively