A Toolchain for the Detection of Structural and Behavioral Latent System Properties ∗

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 structural and behavioral analysis of UML state diagrams 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 with the analysis of industry-provided models that the proposed toolchain is an effective means for discovering unwanted latent system properties in the late requirements phase of development, thus reducing the number of defects propagated to successive phases.