Steffen Vaupel

Model-Driven Development of Mobile Applications Allowing Role-Driven Variants

Rapidly increasing numbers of applications and users make the development of mobile applications to one of the most promising fields in software engineering. Due to short time-to-market, differing platforms and fast emerging technologies, mobile application development faces typical challenges where model-driven development can help. We present a modeling language and an infrastructure for the model-driven development (MDD) of Android apps supporting the specification of different app variants according to user roles. For example, providing users may continuously configure and modify custom content with one app variant whereas end users are supposed to use provided content in their variant. Our approach allows a flexible app development on different abstraction levels: compact modeling of standard app elements, detailed modeling of individual elements, and separate provider models for specific custom needs. We demonstrate our MDD-approach at two apps: a phone book manager and a conference guide being configured by conference organizers for participants.

A generic architecture supporting context-aware data and transaction management for mobile applications

Mobile applications claim to operate reliably during spatial movement, however, developers have to deal with the effects of changing environmental contexts. One of the most important contexts is the connectivity of mobile devices. Since mobile applications are increasingly used as front-ends of transaction systems, they have to be designed for being able to deal with intentional or accidental loss of connection. In fact, we find a lot of mobile applications being not more than portable because they cannot operate without connections. In order to support higher mobility - in the sense that operations may execute across the boundaries of changing network states - we discuss the problem and requirements for context-aware architectures of mobile applications. We present a generic architecture supporting users to effectively use applications on-line as well as off-line. This approach enables the concurrent execution of off-line transactions as well as their durability after synchronization. Starting from example applications, we analyze the design of existing context-aware architectures and corresponding mobile transaction models and present our approach to a generic architecture. Furthermore, we frame various conditions for advantageously using mobile transaction models.

Model-driven development of mobile applications for Android and iOS supporting role-based app variability

Rapidly increasing numbers of applications and users make the development of mobile applications to one of the most promising fields in software engineering. Due to short time to market, differing platforms, and fast emerging technologies, mobile application development faces typical challenges where model-driven development (MDD) can help. We present a modeling language and an infrastructure for the MDD of native apps in Android and iOS. Our approach allows a flexible app development on different abstraction levels: compact modeling of standard app elements such as standard data management and increasingly detailed modeling of individual elements to cover, for example, specific behavior. Moreover, a kind of variability modeling is supported such that mobile apps with variants can be developed. We demonstrate our MDD approach with several apps including a conference app, a museum guide with augmented reality functionality, and a SmartPlug.

Modellgetriebene Entwicklung mobiler Anwendungen mit Augmented Reality Funktionalität

Mobile Anwendungen spielen sowohl im privaten als auch im industriellen Gebrauch eine immer wichtigere Rolle. Die Softwarelosungen fur Smartphones reichen von bereits selbstverstandlichen Dingen wie einem – stets greifbaren – digitalen Kalender bis hin zu Anwendungen zur Umsetzung von Cyberphysischen Systemen im industriellen Umfeld. Dank der rasanten Entwicklung der mobilen Endgerate hinsichtlich Rechenleistung sowie zusatzlich verbauter Hardware wie Gyrosensoren, GPS, Kamera, WLAN etc. scheinen den moglichen Anwendungen immer weniger Grenzen gesetzt. Durch die zur Verfugung stehenden Hardware-Komponenten ist es moglich, dass Konzept der erweiterten Realitat (Augmented Reality) in mobile Anwendungen zu integrieren. Somit besteht z. B. die Moglichkeit, einen Anwender bei der Produktion von komplexen Bauteilen zu unterstutzen, indem er mit der Kamera ein Bauteil erfassen kann und umgehend wichtige Informationen im Display eingeblendet bekommt. Betrachtet man jedoch den Markt der aktuellen Smartphone-Landschaft, so zeigt sich, dass mehrere Betriebssysteme am Markt etabliert sind. Die bestehenden mobilen Anwendungen auf den unterschiedlichen Plattformen unterscheiden sich hierbei ganzlich. Dies fuhrt dazu, dass die Anwendungen je nach Bedarf mehrfach fur die einzelnen Zielplattformen entwickelt werden mussen. An dieser Stelle kommt die modellgetriebene Softwareentwicklung ins Spiel. Mit dieser ist es moglich, Anwendungen auf einer hoheren – plattformunabhangigen – Abstraktionsebene zu definieren und mit entsprechenden Generatoren plattformspezifisch zu generieren.