Testing context-sensitive middleware-based software applications

Abstract

Context-sensitive middleware-based software is an emerging kind of ubiquitous computing application. The components of such software communicate proactively among themselves according to the situational attributes of their environments, known as the "contexts". The actual process of accessing and updating the contexts lies with the middleware. The latter invokes the relevant local and remote operations whenever any context inscribed in the situation-aware interface is satisfied. Since the applications operate in a highly dynamic environment, the testing of context-sensitive software is challenging. Metamorphic testing is a property-based testing strategy. It recommends that, even if a test case does not reveal any failure, follow-up test cases should be further constructed from the original to check whether the software satisfies some necessary conditions of the problem to be implemented. This paper proposes to use isotropic properties of contexts as metamorphic relations for testing context-sensitive software. For instance, distinct points on the same isotropic curve of contexts would entail comparable responses by the components. This notion of testing context relations is novel, robust, and intuitive to users. © 2004 IEEE.