Analysis of compatibility in open-source Android mobile applications
Date
2020-11-09
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Abstract
Non-functional requirements form an intrinsic part of any software system. Compatibility between versions or different platforms of a software product is a form of NFRs. In this thesis, we have studied compatibility in Android mobile applications. We are interested in understanding the different aspects of mobile application incompatibility, their frequency of occurrence, how much effort developers have spent on it, and whether the effort is commensurate with the needs of the users. In this thesis, an analytical compatibility evaluation approach called ACOCUR is proposed. The main characteristics of ACOCUR are: (i) compatibility requirements are automatically identified from user reviews and their types are also determined (ii) compatibility fixes done by developers are systematically analyzed, and (iii) the requirements from users are linked to the fixes to identify the responsiveness of developers to compatibility requirements. We have evaluated open-source mobile applications and have analyzed their commits and reviews to identify the compatibility fixes and requirements respectively. Both the commit messages and reviews have been processed by a pipeline of Natural Language Processing steps. App developers have also been surveyed and their responses have been analyzed to establish the state-of-the-practice and the problems currently faced by developers in this respect. Finally, an automated tool has been developed that implements the ACOCUR methodology to support app developers to identify and analyze compatibility requirements.
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Keywords
Non-functional requirements, Compatibility, Requirement Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Mobile Applications, Natural Language Processing
Citation
Mukherjee, D. (2020). Analysis of compatibility in open-source Android mobile applications (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.