Applying a Modular Framework to Develop Mobile Applications and Services

The development of mobile applications and services has led to new challenges for software programmers. One of the main differences from standard PC programming is that the mobile environment is still limited in several aspects. Thus, there are many applications for mobile devices that share similarities, and implementing new applications may result in duplicated code within the same project or in similar projects. Moreover, current mobile development is still an error-prone task that may produce difficult-to-maintain applications. As a result, developers need new tools to help them to develop mobile software efficiently. This work focuses on a new framework for generating mobile applications and services, MobAppGen. The framework provides a set of components called modules that can be used to construct new applications using a Web interface. The architecture and functionalities of the framework are delineated, and several tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of the framework. For the tests, we created a number of projects using the available modules. In addition, a survey was conducted to estimate the acceptance and usefulness of the framework.