Android apps should be designed to cope with stop-start events, which are the events that require stopping and restoring the execution of an app while leaving its state unaltered. These events can be caused by run-time configuration changes, such as a screen rotation, and by context-switches, such as a switch from one app to another. When a stop-start event occurs, Android saves the state of the app, handles the event, and finally restores the saved state. To let Android save and restore the state correctly, apps must provide the appropriate support. Unfortunately, Android developers often implement this support incorrectly, or do not implement it at all. This bad practice makes apps to incorrectly react to stop-start events, thus generating what we defined data loss problems, that is Android apps that lose user data, behave unexpectedly, and crash due to program variables that lost their values. Data loss problems are difficult to detect because they might be observed only when apps are in specific states and with specific inputs. Covering all the possible cases with testing may require a large number of test cases whose execution must be checked manually to discover whether the app under test has been correctly restored after each stop-start event. It is thus important to complement traditional in-house testing activities with mechanisms that can protect apps as soon as a data loss problem occurs in the field. In this paper we present DataLossHealer, a technique for automatically identifying and healing data loss problems in the field as soon as they occur. DataLossHealer is a technique that checks at run-time whether states are recovered correctly, and heals the app when needed. DataLossHealer can learn from experience, incrementally reducing the overhead that is introduced avoiding to monitor interactions that have been managed correctly by the app in the past.

Riganelli, O., Micucci, D., Mariani, L. (2016). Healing Data Loss Problems in Android Apps. In Proceedings - 2016 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops, ISSREW 2016 (pp.146-152). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. [10.1109/ISSREW.2016.50].

Healing Data Loss Problems in Android Apps

RIGANELLI, OLIVIERO
Primo
;
MICUCCI, DANIELA
Secondo
;
MARIANI, LEONARDO
Ultimo
2016

Abstract

Android apps should be designed to cope with stop-start events, which are the events that require stopping and restoring the execution of an app while leaving its state unaltered. These events can be caused by run-time configuration changes, such as a screen rotation, and by context-switches, such as a switch from one app to another. When a stop-start event occurs, Android saves the state of the app, handles the event, and finally restores the saved state. To let Android save and restore the state correctly, apps must provide the appropriate support. Unfortunately, Android developers often implement this support incorrectly, or do not implement it at all. This bad practice makes apps to incorrectly react to stop-start events, thus generating what we defined data loss problems, that is Android apps that lose user data, behave unexpectedly, and crash due to program variables that lost their values. Data loss problems are difficult to detect because they might be observed only when apps are in specific states and with specific inputs. Covering all the possible cases with testing may require a large number of test cases whose execution must be checked manually to discover whether the app under test has been correctly restored after each stop-start event. It is thus important to complement traditional in-house testing activities with mechanisms that can protect apps as soon as a data loss problem occurs in the field. In this paper we present DataLossHealer, a technique for automatically identifying and healing data loss problems in the field as soon as they occur. DataLossHealer is a technique that checks at run-time whether states are recovered correctly, and heals the app when needed. DataLossHealer can learn from experience, incrementally reducing the overhead that is introduced avoiding to monitor interactions that have been managed correctly by the app in the past.
paper
Android; Data loss; Self-healing; Stop-start events; Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality; Software
English
27th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops, ISSREW 2016
2016
Proceedings - 2016 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops, ISSREW 2016
9781509036011
2016
146
152
7789394
none
Riganelli, O., Micucci, D., Mariani, L. (2016). Healing Data Loss Problems in Android Apps. In Proceedings - 2016 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops, ISSREW 2016 (pp.146-152). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. [10.1109/ISSREW.2016.50].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10281/152469
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