The booming mobile app market attracts a large number of developers. As a result, the competition is extremely tough. This fierce competition leads to high standards required for mobile apps, which mandates efficient and effective testing. Efficient testing requires little effort to use, while effective testing checks that the app under test behaves as expected. Manual testing is highly effective, but it is costly. Automatic testing should come to the rescue, but current automatic methods are either ineffective or inefficient. Methods using implicit specifications – for instance, “an app should not crash” for catching fail-stop errors – are ineffective because they cannot find semantic problems. Methods using explicit specifications such as test scripts are inefficient because they require huge developer effort to create and maintain specifications. In this thesis, we present our two approaches for solving these challenges. We first built the AppDoctor system which efficiently tests mobile apps. It quickly explores an app then slowly but accurately verifies the potential problems to identify bugs without introducing false positives. It uses dependencies discovered between actions to simplify its reports. Our second approach, implemented in the AppFlow system, leverages the ample opportunity of reusing test cases between apps to gain efficiency without losing effectiveness. It allows common UI elements to be used in test scripts then recognizes these UI elements in real apps using a machine learning approach. The system also allows tests to be specified in reusable pieces, and provides a system to synthesize complete test cases from these reusable pieces. It enables robust tests to be created and reused across apps in the same category. The combination of these two approaches enables a developer to quickly test an app on a great number of combinations of actions for fail-stop problems, and effortlessly and efficiently test the app on most common scenarios for semantic problems. This combination covers most of her test requirements and greatly reduces her burden in testing the app.

Recent technological advances in computer science have contributed to immense data generation in many critical areas of biology. These data can be used in intelligent information systems to better understand biological processes from the atomic details of biological molecules to the interaction of species in an ecosystem. This thesis presents My Crystal Diary (MCD), an integrated software application designed for use in an intelligent decision-support system for planning novel crystallisation experiments. PostgreSQL database server is the information repository containing both the experimental data and general knowledge. Web-based interfaces developed in Plone provide remote access to the database by utilizing a Zope Web application server.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 1998. Graduate Programme in Computer Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-168). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ39314.

The infrastructure used to deploy hypermedia applications over the World Wide Web has also been increasingly used to support software that has the majority of its logic implemented apart from Universal Resource Locators (URLs). We denote such software as web-based applications. Whilst there have been many observations about the difference between web-based application development environments and their more traditional counterparts, it is shown that one aspect of web-based application development that has received less attention is the software architecture of web-based applications. In this thesis we demonstrate the positive impact that an appropriate software architecture can have on creating easy-to-maintain web-based applications. / The first part of the thesis presents a taxonomy of web-based applications that is organised around abstraction layers, that highlight the role of software architecture and tiers that reflect the infrastructure of the web on which applications are deployed. It is shown that there is a systematic way to develop a software architecture for a web-based applications by projecting the high level abstract layers representing the application onto the tiers that define the distributed web infrastructure. The thesis next presents a new architecture for web-based applications targeted at lowering the cost of routine maintenance. Various tools that support the use of this architecture in the development process for web-based applications are then presented. The feasibility and usability of the architecture is demonstrated by the construction of several significant applications using it. Finally the new architecture proposed in the thesis is compared experimentally with the major current competitor architecture, which follows the so called model-view-controller pattern, in relation to an ease of maintenance criteria. It is shown that the new architecture has significant advantages over the model-view-controller pattern in making the maintenance of complex web-based applications easier. / Thesis (PhDInformationTechnology)--University of South Australia, 2006.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2009. / Includes graphs and tables. Includes index. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Information Technologies in the Faculty of Engineering & Information Technologies. Title from title screen (viewed 28 April, 2009) Degree awarded 2009; thesis submitted 2008. Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in print.

Thesis (M.S.S.I.S.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Feb. 03, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Washington State University. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.C.I.T.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2006. / "TrailTracker by Chicken Legs Solutions"--T.p. Title from PDF title page (viewed on Aug. 30, 2006). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.C.I.T.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 24, 2006). Includes bibliographical references.

Hung, Kwong Chin. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 15-16). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts also in Chinese.