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Non-functional Testing of Runtime Enforcers in Android

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Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation. Verification Principles (ISoLA 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13701))

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Abstract

Runtime enforcers can be used to ensure that running applications satisfy desired correctness properties. Although runtime enforcers that are correct-by-construction with respect to abstract behavioral models are relatively easy to specify, the concrete software enforcers generated from these specifications may easily introduce issues in the target application. Indeed developers can generate test suites to verify the functional behavior of the enforcers, for instance exploiting the same models used to specify them. However, it remains challenging and tedious to verify the behavior of enforcers in terms of non-functional performance characteristics. This paper describes a practical approach to reveal runtime enforcers that may introduce inefficiencies in the target application. The approach relies on a combination of automatic test generation and runtime monitoring of multiple key performance indicators. We designed our approach to reveal issues in four indicators for mobile systems: responsiveness, launch time, memory, and energy consumption. Experimental results show that our approach can detect performance issues that might be introduced by automatically generated enforcers.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Activities are the entry point of interactions between users and apps https://developer.android.com/guide/components/activities.

  2. 2.

    onPause() is a callback method that is invoked by the Android framework every time an activity is paused.

  3. 3.

    fooCam is a HDR camera app that can take multiple shots with different exposure settings. The app is available on the Google Play Store at the following link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.phunehehe.foocam2 &hl=EN.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thanks Alice Hoa Galli for her help with the experiments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, 20126, Italy

    Oliviero Riganelli, Daniela Micucci & Leonardo Mariani

Authors
  1. Oliviero Riganelli
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  2. Daniela Micucci
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  3. Leonardo Mariani
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Oliviero Riganelli .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Limerick, CSIS and Lero, Limerick, Ireland

    Tiziana Margaria

  2. TU Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Bernhard Steffen

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Riganelli, O., Micucci, D., Mariani, L. (2022). Non-functional Testing of Runtime Enforcers in Android. In: Margaria, T., Steffen, B. (eds) Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation. Verification Principles. ISoLA 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13701. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19849-6_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19849-6_19

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-19849-6

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