A system based on mobile agents to test mobile computing applications

The interest in mobile computing applications is on the rise and they are expected to be a great source of revenue in the forthcoming years. However, not only developing wireless data services but also testing them is a real challenge. In fact, in many circumstances the use of tools to test these services is the most convenient choice. In this article, a system that can be used to test mobile computing applications in a distributed environment is presented. The proposed system, based on mobile agents, presents a range of interesting advantages, such as: (1) it allows to test a real wireless data service on a simulated environment: (2) it can be extended to adapt it to the simulation needs; (3) it allows mixing real and simulated elements transparently to the tested data service; (4) it allows distributed testing, which increases the scalability and accuracy of the results; and (5) it is capable of testing services where the mobile devices execute (mobile) agent-based applications. Experiments that highlight the flexibility and accuracy of the proposed system and experiments testing real applications using the system are also shown. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.