Luis Corral

Mobile multiplatform development: An experiment for performance analysis

Abstract The variety of operating platforms in mobile devices involves separate standards, programming languages, and distribution markets. This poses a challenge on software developers, as to select what platform to develop first for. Web-based multiplatform development tools offer a solution under the principle of developing once using target-agnostic technologies, able to be deployed in multiple platforms; nonetheless, it has been reported that web-based applications suffer significant performance decreases. In this paper, we present a study to analyze the performance of mobile web applications using PhoneGap and Android OS to understand the most relevant performance matters raised by multiplatform tools. We report an experiment focused on evaluating execution time, to characterize the performance overhead found in a web app with respect to an identical native application.

Evolution of Mobile Software Development from Platform-Specific to Web-Based Multiplatform Paradigm

In this paper, we outline a projection on the trend of using web technologies for creating end-user applications in mobile devices. Following a paradigm shift in the software industry, from only-binary applications to dynamic web applications, mobile web development tools evolve to offer an integral native solution that allows to simplify the soft-ware process and broad its scope to a true, single cross-platform development effort. Soon, mobile web development tools will be preferred by designers and programmers thanks to their versatility, economy and usefulness, less dependent on specific platforms and SDKs, while fully functional and reliable in comparison to their binary counterparts.

A method for characterizing energy consumption in Android smartphones

Cellular phones and tablets are ubiquitous, with a market penetration that is counted in millions of active users and units sold. The increasing computing capabilities and strict autonomy requirements on mobile devices drive a particular concern on energy utilization and optimization of this kind of equipment. In this paper, we investigate an approach to relate the energy consumption of smartphones with the operational status of the device, surveying parameters exposed by the operating system using an Android application. Our goal is to explore the means to expand the information that may help to produce more reliable measurements that can be used in further research for designing energy optimization profiles for mobile devices and identify optimization needs.

Software development processes for mobile systems: Is agile really taking over the business?

Mobile applications differ from desktop software due to their particular execution environment, limited resources, high autonomy requirement, market competition, etc. This situation brings the need of having customized development processes that respond efficiently to these challenges, to facilitate the development of high quality products that are able to excel and remain competitive in this domain. While a number of research papers have consistently proposed the adoption of Agile practices, it is not clear how a software development process would help to solve the issues present in the mobile domain. Moreover, there is a lack of evidence that shows a clear link between the proposed methodologies and their utilization in a real-world setting. Finally, the rapid evolution of the mobile environment challenges several of the premises upon which the proposed methodologies were created. In this paper, we present a review on Agile software development processes for mobile applications and their implementations, with the objective of knowing the contribution of Agile methods to address the needs of the mobile software in a production environment. Our goal is to introduce discussion on the need of conducting research that unveils what is the framework of choice of the mobile software industry: if the Agile paradigm was adopted, dismissed, or a new one was created.

Software assurance practices for mobile applications

Mobile software applications have to cope with a particular environment that involves small size, limited resources, high autonomy requirements, competitive business models and many other challenges. To provide development guidelines that respond to these needs, several practices have been introduced; however, it is not clear how these guidelines may contribute to solve the issues present in the mobile domain. Furthermore, the rapid evolution of the mobile ecosystem challenges many of the premises upon which the proposed practices were designed. In this paper, we present a survey of the literature on software assurance practices for mobile applications, with the objective of describing them and assessing their contribution and success. We identified, organized and reviewed a body of research that spans in three levels: software development processes, software product assurance practices, and software implementation practices. By carrying out this literature survey, we reviewed the different approaches that researchers on Software Engineering have provided to address the needs that raise in the mobile software development arena. Moreover, we review the evolution of these practices, identifying how the constant changes and modernization of the mobile execution environment has impacted the methods proposed in the literature. Finally, we introduced discussion on the application of these practices in a real productive setting, opening an area for further research that may determine if practitioners have followed the proposed assurance paradigms.

Method reallocation to reduce energy consumption: an implementation in Android OS

Mobile applications have become ubiquitous, adopted by millions of users that register billions of downloads a day. To increase the competitiveness of the mobile software product, developers should care in a very detailed fashion about the qualities demanded by end users, execution targets and mobile markets. One important quality is the ability of the application to consume energy efficiently, as mobile devices are powered by batteries and they hold a very strong autonomy requirement. In this paper, we investigate the impact that the allocation of a software routine has in the overall energy consumption of a mobile device. We implemented software benchmarks in Java and C and we exercised them in different execution scopes of the Android OS runtime. We measured the amount of energy required to complete each job to determine the energy consumed by each routine, and to know in what cases it is advisable to reallocate the processing job from a regular application to an external execution environment.

Can execution time describe accurately the energy consumption of mobile apps? an experiment in Android

Measuring the energy spent by a software application is a problem that can be solved by having the proper hardware or software instruments. However, not always such tools are available or the provide resolution cannot fit the needs of the user, for instance when measuring a very small piece of code. This problem is particularly relevant on mobile software products, as they are developed to be executed in an environment limited in energy resources. Mobile software engineers should take special consideration on the energy consumption when designing and implementing an application. In this paper, we propose that the energy consumed by a unit of code can be approximated by the execution time. Using software benchmarks run with different data loads, we measured the execution time required to complete the job, and using a software tool to measure the energy spent during the execution of the benchmark, with the objective of finding a relationship among them. We observed that, regardless of the software benchmark, the data load injected and the programming language, of implementation the ratio between the execution time and the energy consumption remains consistent, opening the opportunity to develop techniques to approximate the energy consumption of mobile software based on execution time measurements.

Agile Software Development Processes for Mobile Systems: Accomplishment, Evidence and Evolution

Mobile software applications have to cope with a particular execution environment that includes limited resources, high autonomy requirements, market regulations, and many other constraints. To provide a software development process that responds to these challenges, several methodologies proposed the adoption of Agile practices; however, it is not clear how a software development process would help to solve all the issues present in the mobile domain. Moreover, the rapid evolution of the mobile environment questions several of the premises upon which the proposed methodologies were designed. In this paper, we present a review on Agile software development processes for mobile applications and their implementations, with the objective of knowing the contribution of Agile methods to address the needs of the mobile software in a real production environment. In addition, we aim to put up to date the discussion about what are the best practices that facilitate the creation of high quality software products in the current mobile domain.

Energy-aware performance evaluation of Android custom kernels

Smartphones play a key role in several aspects of our daily life. Their range of application is constantly growing, making them versatile and necessary. However, mobile devices face an important problem: they hold an important autonomy requirement, which is constantly challenged by the short life of batteries. Researchers and practitioners have proposed different strategies to preserve battery life in mobile devices, both from hardware and software point of views. One of the software-based approaches is to apply optimizations at the level of the kernel of the operating system. This strategy is attractive, as it may improve the battery consumption of all applications running on top of the software kernel. The scope of this paper is to compare current Android kernel-based modifications evaluating their impact on battery consumption. To do it, we performed performance tests on each kernel, monitoring the battery consumption in background. Additionally, we run a general performance test to see the impact of the applied kernel modifications to the overall performance of the optimized device. Our results show that kernel level enhancements do improve the battery life and the devices performance. According to our tests, the analyzed custom kernels can reduce the battery consumption up to 33% for isolated tasks, improving the general performance of the device by up to 16%.

Teaching Computational Thinking Using Agile Software Engineering Methods: A Framework for Middle Schools

Computational Thinking (CT) has been recognized as one of the fundamental skills that all graduates should acquire. For this reason, motivational concerns need to be addressed at an early age of a child, and reaching students who do not consider themselves candidates for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines is important as well if the broadest audience possible is to be engaged. This article describes a framework for teaching and assessing CT in the context of K-12 education. The framework is based on Agile software engineering methods, which rely on a set of principles and practices that can be mapped to the activities of CT. The article presents as well the results of an experiment applying this framework in two sixth-grade classes, with 42 participants in total. The results show that Agile software engineering methods are effective at teaching CT in middle schools, after the addition of some tasks to allow students to explore, project, and experience the potential product before using the software tools at hand. Moreover, according to the teachers’ feedback, the students reached all the educational objectives of the topics involved in the multidisciplinary activities. This result can be taken as an indicator that it is possible to use computing as a medium for teaching other subjects, besides computer science.