A toolchain for the detection of structural and behavioral latent system properties

  • Authors:
  • Adam C. Jensen;Betty H. C. Cheng;Heather J. Goldsby;Edward C. Nelson

  • Affiliations:
  • Michigan State University, East Lansing MI;Michigan State University, East Lansing MI;Michigan State University, East Lansing MI;Ford Research and Advanced Engineering, Dearborn, MI

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Model driven engineering languages and systems
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

The cost to repair a requirements-based defect in softwarebased 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 syntaxbased 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.