Abstract
The cost to repair a requirements-based defect in software-based systems increases substantially with each successive phase of the software lifecycle in which the error is allowed to propagate. While tools exist to facilitate early detection of design flaws, such tools do not detect flaws in system requirements, thus allowing such flaws to propagate into system design and implementation. This paper describes an experience report using a toolchain that supports a novel combination of structural and behavioral analysis of UML state diagrams that is not currently available in commercial UML modeling tools. With the toolchain, models can be incrementally and systematically improved through syntax-based analysis, type checking, and detection of latent behavioral system properties, including feature interactions. This paper demonstrates use of the toolchain on an industry-provided model of onboard electronics for an automotive application.
This work has been supported in part by NSF grants CCF-0541131, IIP-0700329, CCF-0750787, CCF-0820220, DBI-0939454, CNS-0854931, Army Research Office grant W911NF-08-1-0495, Ford Motor Company, and a Quality Fund Program grant from Michigan State University. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, Army, Ford, or other research sponsors.
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Jensen, A.C., Cheng, B.H.C., Goldsby, H.J., Nelson, E.C. (2011). A Toolchain for the Detection of Structural and Behavioral Latent System Properties. In: Whittle, J., Clark, T., Kühne, T. (eds) Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems. MODELS 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6981. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24485-8_50
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