Testing Context-Aware Applications Based on Bigraphical Modeling

Context-aware applications often consist of a middleware and a collection of services, and run autonomously adaptive to changing environments with sensors installed in physical facilities and end-users moving around. Testing such applications is challenging due to the complex interactions with the environments. This paper proposes a model-based testing approach that extends a bigraphical sorting predicate logic to specify constraints and create a meta-model, then builds a domain-specific model with static structures and dynamic behaviors based on the bigraphical meta-model, and uses the domain-specific model to describe the environments. Tracing the interactions between the environment model and the application model generates test cases to verify the interactions between the environments and applications. To decrease the number of test cases, this paper proposes a bigraphical pattern-flow testing and a backward-derivation testing. A case study of airport applications demonstrates the fault detection capabilities and reductions of test cases by comparing with other test strategies.