skip to main content
10.1145/1368088.1368098acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesicseConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Testing pervasive software in the presence of context inconsistency resolution services

Published: 10 May 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Pervasive computing software adapts its behavior according to the changing contexts. Nevertheless, contexts are often noisy. Context inconsistency resolution provides a cleaner pervasive computing environment to context-aware applications. A faulty context-aware application may, however, mistakenly mix up inconsistent contexts and resolved ones, causing incorrect results. This paper studies how such faulty context-aware applications may be affected by these services. We model how programs should handle contexts that are continually checked and resolved by context inconsistency resolution, develop novel sets of data flow equations to analyze the potential impacts, and thus formulate a new family of test adequacy criteria for testing these applications. Experimentation shows that our approach is promising.

References

[1]
L. Capra, W. Emmerich, and C. Mascolo. CARISMA: context-aware reflective middleware system for mobile applications. IEEE TSE, 29 (10): 929--944, 2003.
[2]
A. K. Dey, D. Salber, and G. D. Abowd. A conceptual framework and a toolkit for supporting the rapid prototyping of context-aware applications. Human-Computer Interaction Journal, 16 (2-4): 97--166, 2001.
[3]
P. G. Frankl and O. Iakounenko. Further empirical studies of test effectiveness. In Proceedings of SIGSOFT '98/FSE-6, pages 153--162, 1998.
[4]
P. G. Frankl and S. N. Weiss. An experimental comparison of the effectiveness of branch testing and data flow testing. IEEE TSE, 19 (8): 774--787, 1993.
[5]
P. G. Frankl and E. J. Weyuker. An applicable family of data flow testing criteria. IEEE TSE, 14 (10): 1483--1498, 1988.
[6]
D. Gay, P. Levis, R. von Behren, M. Welsh, E. Brewer, and D. Culler. The nesC language: a holistic approach to networked embedded systems. In Proceedings of PLDI 2003, pages 1--11. 2003.
[7]
M. J. Harrold and M. L. Soffa. Efficient computation of interprocedural definition--use chains. ACM TOSEM, 16 (2): 175--204, 1994.
[8]
M. S. Hecht. Flow Analysis of Computer Programs. Elsevier, 1977.
[9]
M. Hutchins, H. Foster, T. Goradia, and T. Ostrand. Experiments on the effectiveness of dataflow- and controlflow-based test adequacy criteria. In Proceedings of ICSE '94, pages 191--200, 1994.
[10]
S. R. Jeffery, M. Garofalakis, and M. J. Franklin. Adaptive cleaning for RFID data streams. In Proceedings of VLDB 2006, pages 163--174. 2006.
[11]
Z. Jin and A. J. Offutt. Coupling-based criteria for integration testing. Software Testing, Verification and Reliability, 8 (3): 133--154, 1998.
[12]
C. Julien and G.-C. Roman. EgoSpaces: facilitating rapid development of context-aware mobile applications. IEEE TSE, 32 (5): 281--298, 2006.
[13]
H. Lu. A context-oriented framework for software testing in pervasive environment. In Doctoral Symposium, Proceedings of ICSE 2007, pages 77--78. 2007.
[14]
H. Lu, W. K. Chan, and T. H. Tse. Testing context-aware middleware-centric programs: a data flow approach and an RFID--based experimentation. In Proceedings of SIGSOFT 2006/FSE-14, pages 242--252. 2006.
[15]
A. L. Murphy, G. P. Picco, and G.-C. Roman. LIME: a coordination model and middleware supporting mobility of hosts and agents. ACM TOSEM, 15 (3): 279--328, 2006.
[16]
L. M. Ni, Y. Liu, Y. C. Lau, and A. P. Patil. LANDMARC: indoor location sensing using active RFID. ACM Wireless Networks, 10 (6): 701--710, 2004.
[17]
S. C. Ntafos. On required element testing. IEEE TSE, SE-10 (6): 795--803, 1984.
[18]
J. Rao, S. Doraiswamy, H. Thakkar, and L. S. Colby. A deferred cleansing method for RFID data analytics. In Proceedings of VLDB 2006, pages 175--186. 2006.
[19]
P. Tarr and L. A. Clarke. Consistency management for complex applications. In Proceedings of ICSE '98, pages 230--239. 1998.
[20]
T. H. Tse, S. S. Yau, W. K. Chan, H. Lu, and T. Y. Chen. Testing context-sensitive middleware-based software applications. In Proceedings of COMPSAC 2004, volume 1, pages 458--465. 2004.
[21]
Z. Wang, S. G. Elbaum, and D. S. Rosenblum. Automated generation of context-aware tests. In Proceedings of ICSE 2007, pages 406--415. 2007.
[22]
R. Want, A. Hopper, V. Falcao, and J. Gibbons. The active badge location system. ACM TOIS, 10 (1): 91--102, 1992.
[23]
C. Xu, S. C. Cheung, and W. K. Chan. Incremental consistency checking for pervasive context. In Proceedings of ICSE 2006, pages 292--301. 2006.
[24]
C. Xu, S. C. Cheung, W. K. Chan, and C. Ye. Heuristics-based strategies for resolving context inconsistencies in pervasive computing applications. In Proceedings of ICDCS 2008. 2008.
[25]
S. S. Yau and F. Karim. An adaptive middleware for context-sensitive communications for real-time applications in ubiquitous computing environments. Journal of Real-Time Systems, 26 (1): 29--61, 2004.

Cited By

View all
  • (2021)Generic Adaptive Scheduling for Efficient Context Inconsistency DetectionIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2019.289897647:3(464-497)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2021
  • (2021) TEA- Cloud : A Formal Framework for Testing Cloud Computing Systems IEEE Transactions on Reliability10.1109/TR.2020.301151270:1(261-284)Online publication date: Mar-2021
  • (2021)Testing of adaptive and context‐aware systems: approaches and challengesSoftware Testing, Verification and Reliability10.1002/stvr.177231:7Online publication date: 3-May-2021
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
ICSE '08: Proceedings of the 30th international conference on Software engineering
May 2008
558 pages
ISBN:9781605580791
DOI:10.1145/1368088
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 10 May 2008

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. context inconsistency resolution
  2. pervasive computing
  3. test adequacy

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

ICSE '08
Sponsor:

Acceptance Rates

ICSE '08 Paper Acceptance Rate 56 of 370 submissions, 15%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 276 of 1,856 submissions, 15%

Upcoming Conference

ICSE 2025

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)3
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 18 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2021)Generic Adaptive Scheduling for Efficient Context Inconsistency DetectionIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2019.289897647:3(464-497)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2021
  • (2021) TEA- Cloud : A Formal Framework for Testing Cloud Computing Systems IEEE Transactions on Reliability10.1109/TR.2020.301151270:1(261-284)Online publication date: Mar-2021
  • (2021)Testing of adaptive and context‐aware systems: approaches and challengesSoftware Testing, Verification and Reliability10.1002/stvr.177231:7Online publication date: 3-May-2021
  • (2018)Advancements in cloud computing software testing research2018 4th International Conference on Recent Advances in Information Technology (RAIT)10.1109/RAIT.2018.8389045(1-6)Online publication date: Mar-2018
  • (2018)An Automated Functional Testing Framework for Context-Aware ApplicationsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2018.28652136(46568-46583)Online publication date: 2018
  • (2017)Constraint-based context modeling and management for personalized mobile systemsJournal of Web Engineering10.5555/3177571.317757616:1-2(103-125)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2017
  • (2017)GEAS: Generic Adaptive Scheduling for High-Efficiency Context Inconsistency Detection2017 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME.2017.10(137-147)Online publication date: Sep-2017
  • (2016)Characterisation of Challenges for Testing of Adaptive SystemsProceedings of the 1st Brazilian Symposium on Systematic and Automated Software Testing10.1145/2993288.2993294(1-10)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2016
  • (2016)SITJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2016.07.002120:C(70-88)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
  • (2016)Considering context in the design of intelligent systemsJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2015.10.041112:C(26-47)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2016
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media