Automated support for mobile application testing and maintenance

Abstract

Mobile applications are an essential part of our daily life. In fact, they can be used for tasks that range from reading the news to performing bank transactions. Considering the impact that mobile applications have in our lives, it is important for developers to test them and gain confidence that they behave as expected. However, testing mobile applications proves to be challenging. In fact, mobile companies report that they do not have enough time and the right methods to test. In addition, in the case of Android applications, the situation is further complicated by the "fragmentation" of the ecosystem. Developers not only need to ensure that an application behaves as expected but also need to make sure that the application does so on a multitude of different devices. Finally, because it is virtually impossible to release a bug free application, developers also need to quickly react to bug reports and release a fixed version of the application before customer loss. The research plan proposed in this paper, aims to provide novel techniques to automate the support for mobile application testing and maintenance. Specifically, it proposes techniques to: test apps more effectively and efficiently, tackle the problems caused by the "fragmentation" of the Android ecosystem, and help developers in quickly handling bug reports.