QW2002 Paper 9I2

Ibrahim K. El-Far, Roussi Roussev, and Nattawut Sridranup
(Florida Institute of Technology)

A Framework for Testing Wireless Applications

Key Points

Presentation Abstract

The Wireless Application Protocol or WAP is an open de facto industry wide standard for developing applications over wireless communications networks. WAP specifications present a variety of solutions analogous to those employed by the traditional Internet ex-cept they are more optimized for wireless applications. Examples include the Wireless Session Protocol for hypermedia transfer and the Wireless Markup Language which was designed to suit browsing on telephony and other mobile devices. With these new tech-nologies come testing problems and concerns, some of which we have attempted to ad-dress while testing a smart phone device. In this presentation, we give a detailed account of this experience. We show how to build a framework for testing client and server wire-less applications and how we employ models of protocols and markup languages to drive test automation. We discuss some of the difficulties in setting up the test environment and in generating and evaluating our tests.

About the Author

Ibrahim K. El-Far is a doctoral candidate in computer science under James A. Whittaker at the Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Florida. He has nearly six years of ex-perience in model-based testing with state machines. Mr. El-Far is currently preparing a dissertation on testing software modeled with formal grammars and developing the G-Factory™ tool that performs much of the automated testing effort described in the pres-entation. His interests are in investigating software models, appropriateness of models to specific contexts, test automation and tools, and software testing education.

Roussi Roussev is a Master’s student in computer sciences and he currently works for the Center for Software Engineering Research, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Florida. He has extensive experience in Windows programming and has worked with the Windows Kernel group at Microsoft in 2000 and 2001. He is interested in software test-ing methods, operating systems and distributed software.

Nattawut Sridranup is a doctoral student in computer science at Florida Institute of Tech-nology, Melbourne, Florida, and he develops contract test solutions at the Center for Software Engineering Research at the university. He is interested in applying formal methods in software testing.