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.