Investigating the use of DSLs for automated testing across multiple android devices

Abstract

Mobile devices have become a vital instrument in our everyday life. Only a few years ago, these devices were limited to basic functionalities such as phone calls and text messages. However the technology evolved and today it covers most of our daily life for a range of requirements. The growing need for enhanced functionality gave birth to a complete variety of technologies for tailored mobile app development. Given users' high expectations and the ease with which they can switch to a competing provider, it is very important to produce high quality apps. This further compounded by the fact that a negative review will discourage any potential customers. Although there are multiple platforms, there is effectively one domain that is to say the domain of mobile applications. Some of the main notions in this domain are gestures, accelerometers and GPS locators which remain mostly consistent regardless of the specific device and platform API. The ma,in hypothesis behind this dissertation is that a domain-specific language (DSL) can be designed to express tests for Android devices. Furthermore, scripts written in such a DSL can be used to automatically generate executable code which implements the specified tests. This dissertation presents the journey of designing such a DSL, implementing a proof of concept tool and subsequently evaluating the concept via a critical analysis and a case study. Observations indicate that whilst a substantial initial development effort is required to implement the language, it is arguably feasible to use it to express tests and generate executable test suite automation.