Evaluating testing strategies for resource related failures in mobile applications.

Mobile applications have been used for multiple purposes from entertainment to critical domains. As a consequence, the quality of mobile applications has become a crucial aspect, for instance, by promoting the use of testing as a quality assurance practice. The diversity of mobile platforms is pervaded by several resources related to communication capabilities, sensors, and user-controlled options. As a result, applications can present unexpected behaviors and resource interactions can introduce failures that manifest themselves in specific resource combinations. These failures can compromise the mobile application quality and harm the user experience. We evaluate the failure-detection capability and effectiveness of five sampling testing strategies (Random, One-Enabled, One-Disabled, Most-Enabled-Disabled, and Pairwise) in the context of resource related failures in 15 mobile applications. We focus on 14 common resources of the Android platform and analyze the resource interactions more likely to cause failures. Random had great percentages of failing test cases, followed by One-Enabled, Most-Enabled-Disabled, and Pairwise. We observe that One-Enabled and One-Disabled are the most effective testing strategies for six and four applications, respectively. Surprisingly, resource pairs have more influence on failures than other resource combinations, varying widely among the applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]